


An Incomplete Guide to Enacting Alliance, Affection, and Affliction

by arsons



Category: New Dangan Ronpa V3: Everyone's New Semester of Killing
Genre: Character Study, M/M, Missing Scene
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-03-10
Updated: 2019-03-10
Packaged: 2019-11-15 04:06:03
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Major Character Death
Chapters: 1
Words: 21,358
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/18066293
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/arsons/pseuds/arsons
Summary: Ouma’s smile distorted to something dark, a quirk that Kaito had already grown far too used to, but then it quickly subdued. “We have two hours,” he said.“Fuck,” Kaito muttered, closing his eyes. “Fuck, okay. You better start explaining this entire damn plan of yours right now, then.”





	An Incomplete Guide to Enacting Alliance, Affection, and Affliction

**Author's Note:**

> this takes place during chapter 5 and contains minor depictions of blood, gore, and injuries.

Kaito was somewhere on the edge of consciousness when fingers threaded through his hair and yanked.

Distantly, he could hear someone—Maki, probably, she’d been above him—screaming his name and hitting…something. It was difficult to distinguish any of her other words, if there were any; her voice was hazy and distorted, as if he were listening to her from somewhere underwater. But he couldn’t be underwater, right? He took a deep breath, then cringed at the sharp, shooting pain that raked through his chest, burning at his sternum then branching down towards his lungs. No, definitely not underwater.

The dull thudding grew more and more frantic, Maki’s voice swirled in with it, building an awful crescendo until, at what seemed like the worst of it, it stopped entirely. There was one more cry of his name, and then there was silence.

And then there was plastic against the front of his teeth.

“Gck—fuck…off,” left his mouth before he could realize he was speaking aloud. There was someone next to him, he could tell, and probably someone behind him. As his mind rushed to piece together what had happened, the person next to him snorted. The plastic tapped against his teeth once more.

“Okay, Momota-chan. You’re okay. You’ll be fine, just stop being a baby…”

Momota-chan. That was his name, but. Something seemed off about it, Kaito thought, as it reverberated through his head.

“Not a… Not a b—“

“I know! You’re not a baby, I’m _reallll_ sure. I’ll fuck off soon, but open up, please… Shh, you’re alright… You’re doing okay…”

Despite the quiet reassurances, Kaito felt that he was actually _not_ doing the fuck okay. Just as something bitter began to spill over his tongue, his lungs heaved hard enough that his whole body shook from the force of it. The plastic disappeared from his mouth, and the person next to him cursed quietly and slid their hand down to his shoulder. Kaito reached his own hand up to grasp it; it was cold and small, and after a beat, whoever it was connected to curled their fingers over his lightly. The gesture was comforting enough until flashes of light began to accompany the pounding in his head.

“Hey,” the voice calmed from some place next to his ear. “Go ahead. It’s alright. You’re alright. You can go ahead and cough.”

_Yeah, I certainly fucking can_ , Kaito thought, and did just that. If he’d had it in him to laugh, he might’ve right then at such a blunt statement.

The fit was as violent as all his recent ones had been, and even though he couldn’t see it, he could tell blood was starting to spill over his bottom lip. Fucking hell, he felt like he’d directly inhaled liquid and it was all on the verge of coming right back up. He coughed and shook and spit up blood until he couldn’t anymore, and then he dug his nails into the floor beneath him.

Floor. Tile. That wasn’t a person behind him—it was a wall. His mind was still trying to orient him, but whoever was sat next to him was forcing plastic to his mouth again. He was far too confused and exhausted to fight back; he simply complied whenever bitter liquid was being poured down his throat. Was it slightly metallic, or was that just the blood overpowering it?

_Get up_ , his brain was screaming. _You don’t know what’s happening. This isn’t safe. Get up._

_But why?_ Kaito argued back. He was only drinking something, and he really did need water after all that coughing. He wasn’t in danger; he was really just—

Momota-chan. Tile flooring. Maki at a window, punching and screaming. Ouma.

_Ouma_. Fuck.

“Fuck!” Kaito cried, making a desperate attempt to swing his shoulder and throw Ouma off of him. Ouma stumbled with a sudden “Shit!” then pushed back, easily taking advantage of Kaito’s frail state.

“Shut up! Hold the hell still!”

“Fuck—off—“ Kaito gritted out, twisting his head away from whatever the hell Ouma was holding to his mouth; his other arm reached up and gripped Ouma’s at the elbow, trying to pry him off as he followed. As a cough shook Kaito again, Ouma tipped the bottle out, and Kaito was choking down the remaining contents before he could do much else.

“Theeere we go, Momota-chan. Took you long enough. Jeez, you’re starting to hurt me! Let go before we have to amputate or something!”

Kaito winced as he opened his eyes for the first time since hitting the wall. As the spots in his vision cleared, Ouma gradually came into focus. His hair was mussed around his face, which was as bright and smiling as it had been before he’d been shot twice. At Kaito’s confused blinking, Ouma’s smile screwed up even further, and he let out a decisively morbid giggle.

Everything was coming back together now. Kaito remembered kicking the bathroom door back, crossbow in hand, when Ouma had opened it. Maki showing up in the Exisal, shooting Ouma when he’d reached for the remote, demanding he admit to being a Remnant of Despair. Kaito had listened, puzzled, for a minute, then scrambled when Maki lifted her crossbow again. An arrow in his arm, the Hangar door closing, Maki screaming from the window. Ouma had punched him and drank the torture serum antidote. Maki had been crying—Kaito had never seen Maki cry before. She’d taken off with a pained “Hang on!”

Ouma had thrown the window shut the instant she’d vanished, and as Kaito stumbled back to his feet, he had the distinct feeling of being stabbed through his chest. That wasn’t right—he’d been shot in the arm, hadn’t he?—and then the coughing commenced so immediately that he’d lost his footing. The Electrobomb flashed, and Ouma had said “Momota-chan?” in the seconds before Kaito collapsed.

Fuck. He’d never coughed so hard that he’d passed out before. He didn’t have the time to contemplate it, though; he released his grip on Ouma’s elbow.

Kaito was starting with, “What in the _fucking world_ did you just—” when he saw the bottle in Ouma’s hand.

Its label was smeared with blood, but it was still unmistakable.

“No fucking way,” he breathed.

Ouma grinned at him. “I’m afraid so, Momota-chan.”

“But—you—what the _fuck_ , Ouma!? You—you drank that shit!”

“Ooh, articulate!” Ouma mocked. Kaito had only just come back to, and he was already reeling again. Ouma’s smiling face was taunting him. There was another antidote? But—Maki had been sure, she’d said, that there was only one bottle. Ouma leaned closer to catch Kaito’s eye.

“You’re struggling, aren’t you, Momota-chan? It’s not too difficult. I never actually drank the thing! You really love jumping to conclusions, huh?”

Kaito blinked.

“No, you caught me,” Ouma sighed. “I was lying. You just believed hard enough, and another antidote appeared out of the air.”

Fucking hell. Kaito groaned as he arranged himself back against the wall, and it was then that he noticed his left hand was still wrapped around Ouma’s. He pulled it back quickly.

“Hm? What’s the matter—cat got your tongue? You’ve never been so quiet before. It’s kinda nice.”

“Fuck—fuck you. Just…what the hell is going on? You never drank the antidote?” Another thought crossed Kaito’s mind, and he felt his stomach churn the slightest bit. “Did you just save my life? Was this because I took that arrow for you?”

Ouma’s sudden bark of laughter was so sharp that Kaito nearly flinched. “Ha! No waaay, Momota-chan! Leave it to a guy like you to assume that, though. As if I’d care about your life, or karma, or whatever. No, this is about something bigger!”

_This_ was too fucking much to handle, Kaito decided, after everything that’d just taken place. He braced his hand against the wall behind him and pushed off. Ouma stood as well, still bleeding steadily from the arrow in his shoulder, then took a step in front of him.

“Not so fast, Astro Boy! We’ve got business to talk.”

“Business? You never—aren’t you fucking _dying!?_ ”

“I might be!” Ouma shrugged. “Only if you cooperate with my plan, though.”

Kaito’s mind was flashing back and forth between panic and confusion and—anger, definitely anger. Ouma had kept him locked in the goddamn bathroom for the better part of two days. He’d woken up slumped against a toilet and did nothing but sit alone for hours before Ouma called through the door. There’d been nothing to eat but the stupid scraps Ouma had been passing to him, and even then, he’d held off for as long as his pride let him. The initial situation was ridiculous enough; whatever was transpiring in front of him was entirely fucked to hell and back.

“Well, that’s a lie, actually,” Ouma said. “I’m dying no matter what.”

A killing game, Monokuma had been calling it. A fucking killing game that Ouma had orchestrated himself. Some little bastard decided to fuck with everyone’s lives for fun, and that same bastard was now cornering Kaito in a random fucking bathroom. If Kaito had enough strength at that moment to swing on Ouma, he might’ve.

But…he didn’t, and his curiosity was starting to wear him down. Ouma was still smiling up at him, two arrows impaled in his body, shuddering just barely enough for Kaito to notice.

“Momota-chan’s got blood in his shitty goatee. Did you know that?”

Kaito exhaled harshly.

“Alright, enough. What the fuck are you talking about?”

“The blood? You coughed it all up a minute ago, stupid—“

“Not the blood! God, your fucking plan, Ouma. What plan?”

Ouma’s face lit up. “Oh! Well, I’ve been thinking of a plan for a while to throw the mastermind off guard.”

Right—that was…not adding up. Kaito opened his mouth to respond, then stopped when Ouma took a shaky breath. His face seemed paler than before, if that were possible. But Kaito shook himself—that kind of concern could wait.

“Throw them off guard? The hell does that mean? I thought _you_ were the mastermind.”

Ouma looked confused for half a second, then raised his eyebrows in what Kaito assumed was recognition. “Oh!” he said, and then, as if it were the most natural thing in the world: “Um, that was a lie. I only pretended to be the mastermind.”

Kaito nearly recoiled. “ _Pretended?_ ” he spluttered, not sure whether he was more surprised or disgusted.

Ouma’s smile was back again, and his next words carried some sense of pride. “You all fell for it. But, y’know…I _had_ been dropping fake hints…” He reached in his pocket and pulled out the Exisal remote. “Like this remote control,” he explained. “I had Iruma-chan make it. The mysterious message in the courtyard… Turning Gonta-kun into a culprit… All that preparation was just to make you guys think I was the mastermind.”

If this admission had come days prior, or a couple weeks out, or even at the start of the game, Kaito would’ve laughed and turned away without a second thought. Ouma was easy, he had figured. Ouma was someone entirely understandable—some pleasure-seeking freak riding a high of attention and entertainment, screaming to be inflammatory first and last. He was naïve, he was one-track minded, and he was a pathological liar because he could be. He’d accused Kaito of murder simply to preach about the dangers of trust and friendship, which had no place in a killing game—a killing game that _he_ had planned.

Or, maybe not. Kaito wanted to believe he was trapped here for a reason other than being given morality lessons. He’d offered Ouma the benefit of the doubt before, and the kid spat it back in his face; other than the earnest expression Ouma was wearing, there was no reason to try it again. Kaito didn’t want to admit not understanding what Ouma was made of. He could trust Ouma now, despite the warnings that’d come from him in the first place, or he could push him aside and demand to be let go.

But the fact that Ouma was standing in front of him, holding the empty antidote bottle that he’d saved for Kaito…it had to mean something, right? Probably, Kaito _didn’t_ understand Ouma—he didn’t _want_ to, he was sure—but this was his life on the line. Ouma was going to succumb to poison soon, anyway, so he might as well be humored. Or…

Or say Ouma was being honest. Say Ouma wasn’t the mastermind, and he’d really created some façade for some fucking reason. If it were true, Kaito would want to know the details. He couldn’t just ignore them; it was the closest he could come to understanding the freak show of a school he was locked in. With that conclusion, he finally asked, “Then, what the hell? Why would you want to do all of that?”

Ouma had been waiting patiently, watching Kaito for the seconds he’d deliberated in silence. “The reason why I pretended to be the mastermind,” Ouma said—and then his smile was gone, and his body went rigid.

“Was to end this boring killing game!”

Kaito was used to his acts and faces and tears. He was. But…

But something about Ouma right then was uncomfortably genuine. _Could_ Ouma manage to be genuine? Kaito buried that thought before it could grate at him, and he swallowed. He wanted to hear all of this. “To end it?”

Ouma wasn’t stopping. “I thought if I showed you the despairing truth, you guys wouldn’t want to go outside anymore. I thought it would end the killing game, but instead, _this_ happened… I’m gonna die by Harukawa-chan’s hands. But why do you think this happened? _Why_ do you think she tried to kill me? _Why_ do you think the killing game started again?”

Somewhere, his mind was registering that this speech had a point; all Kaito could focus on, though, was Ouma’s desperate, uncharacteristic expression. Was this another lie? Or… “Why I think…?” he started.

“Because the real mastermind instigated it,” Ouma stressed. “I’m certain of it. They manipulated her without us noticing.” Ouma’s eyes strayed from Kaito’s for the first time since his raving began as he finished, quieter, “Man…thanks to that, everything is ruined…”

Kaito was still struggling to comprehend everything Ouma was saying. The past hour had been a pretty fucking confusing one, to say the least. He’d decided on asking the details, but they were far from what he’d been expecting if they were the truth. “The true mastermind instigated it?” Kaito asked, still trying to follow. “So, whoever that person is, they instigated Maki’s actions, too?”

Ouma seemed to have calmed down somewhat. “Yeah, they probably tried to eliminate me because I pretended to be the mastermind…”

“Then who the hell _is_ the true mastermind!?”

“Wh-who knows…” Ouma offered, his mouth quirking back up into the smallest smile. “I dunno know the answer either…but it doesn’t matter. I’m not going to lose to them…this game is pointless unless you win.”

Kaito blinked at Ouma’s breathlessness. Through the whole tirade, he’d almost forgotten that the kid had been shot and poisoned. He glanced down at the arrow he’d put in Ouma’s shoulder and nearly winced. God, it was probably taking a lot to be standing on his own like that. Kaito held back from offering Ouma a hand just as he began speaking again.

“That’s why…I thought of a special plan. Since I’m on the verge of losing, it’ll help me win!”

Right, plan. Kaito _had_ forgotten that one. “I don’t really get it, but is this a plan to throw off the mastermind?”

Ouma took a step closer, his face cheery, and grabbed the front of Kaito’s jacket. “Well.”

Kaito didn’t get to react before Ouma’s smile darkened.

“It’s not too complicated, Momota-chan. I just want you to kill me.”

The room was quiet.

The room was _too_ quiet, in fact; in the following silence, Kaito realized he could hear his pulse in his ears. But…

_I didn’t fucking hear that right_ , he thought. There was… no way, that Ouma really...

Despite Kaito’s doubt, the words still hung heavy in the air, and his heartbeat just grew more and more pronounced in his chest. Kaito took a step backwards, and Ouma released his jacket. His smile hadn’t wavered.

“Wh…”

“I have a way to make sure Monokuma doesn’t know I’m dead,” Ouma started, not caring that Kaito was staring on in shock. “That’s the point—to make sure he doesn’t know! We’ll convince him that you’re the victim, Momota-chan. He’ll think you’re dead, and he’ll be wrong. Therefore, his ruling is invalid, and the game ends! Nishishi, it’s a perfect trap!”

_You sound way too fucking enthusiastic_ , Kaito wanted to say, but didn’t. Most importantly, there was something wrong about whatever the hell Ouma was saying.

“Ouma…why’s that even matter? Monokuma wouldn’t care if his ruling was fucked.”

Ouma clicked his tongue. “That’s where you’re wrong, Momota-chan. Him and the mastermind can’t break the rules as they please… Being unfair like that definitely isn’t allowed.”

“…What do you mean?”

“Death games exist to be watched, don’t they? If no one was watching, there’d be no reason to adhere so strictly to the rules… There’d be no reason for a game in the first place.” Ouma’s expression turned grave, and Kaito tensed. “Monokuma _has_ been strict about the rules, though, and he wants the game to be interesting…that’s probably why he agreed to my plan in the Virtual World. Someone has to be watching this—I have no doubt that there’s an audience.”

That…made sense, horribly enough.

Ouma had an awful, reasonable point, and when Kaito recounted, it seemed like evidence was stacked in his favor. The black comedy, the extravagance, some of the shit that the Monokubs had said… Put in that light, it could start to be explainable. Kaito couldn’t get over how fucking sing-song Ouma was being about it, though—that, and…

“Y-Yeah, but…killing you… What the fuck is that about!? You really want me to fucking _murder_ you?”

Ouma looked smaller than he ever had, covered in blood under the burning fluorescent light. If Kaito weren’t so fucking— _disgusted_ , terrified, baffled—at what Ouma had been saying, he probably would’ve asked him to sit down or something, instead of standing there shaking. Ouma reached up to put pressure on his shoulder wound, and Kaito actually managed to feel an ounce of pity for him. That was a new one.

Ouma’s stature did little to diminish his commandeering presence, though. He scoffed at Kaito’s words. “That’s your reaction, is it? I can’t say I’m surprised, but…would you really be okay with it? If you let this poison kill me, then Harukawa-chan,”—Kaito bristled at the name—“will be the culprit. Her crime would be exposed sooo easily, too! If that’s the case, her and I will be dying for nothing, right? Just like the mastermind wants...”

The pity morphed into something worse as Kaito was seized by anger. Maki screaming at the window had been pushed to the back of his mind, but Ouma’s words brought the memory back full force. Maki had never asked for any of this shit to happen either.

Kaito could feel himself shaking as he responded, his teeth gritted, “ _That’s fucking low, you bastard_. So this is why you…”

The memory of Maki screaming at the window was replaced by another: Ouma’s hand wrapped around his own, plastic hitting off his teeth, a quiet voice coaxing him gently through his coughing, making sure he drank the dose needed to counteract the poison.

Inexplicably, Kaito felt a stab of betrayal when Ouma’s face contorted into something near fucking feral. He should have expected as much.

“Nishishi!” he giggled, stepping closer to Kaito once more. “I _am_ the Ultimate Supreme Leader… I’m willing to do whatever it takes.” Kaito stepped backwards, away from him, and Ouma smiled. “Even sacrifice my own life.”

Kaito had nothing to say. His face felt hot with emotion.

“This is our chance, Momota-chan. Our chance to put an end to the killing game. As long as you kill me, we can ruin this whole thing… As for the mastermind, and whoever might be watching this…” Ouma’s expression was on the brink of crazed—Kaito had never been afraid of the fucker, but the mania overwhelming his voice was goddamn _sinister_ —“ _We’ll drag them down to the depths of despair!”_ And then, in the same sinister tone, as if it weren’t _heartfelt_ of all fucking things: “Everyone who died can finally rest in peace!”

Ouma was cackling. Kaito was floored.

“Ah, well.”

And just like that, the air around Ouma shifted completely. His body relaxed, and his left arm went straight back to grab at his bloodied shoulder. A hiss of pain escaped his teeth. “I think I’m gonna kick the bucket any minute here, so…could we hurry it up a bit?”

Kaito just stared at him. “You’re fucking crazy, man.”

Ouma’s face twisted into what looked like an honest smile. He giggled, seeming to take praise, weirdly enough, out of what Kaito offered. “But,” Ouma said, “at least…I wasn’t boring, right?”

Kaito wasn’t sure how to answer. Ouma was scrutinizing him, but he couldn’t bear to make eye contact; instead, his eyes again wandered lower to the arrow in Ouma’s shoulder. It was still dripping blood.

“…That’s gotta be fucking killing you.”

Ouma’s eyebrows went up, and he glanced at the spot Kaito was looking. “Ah, this old thing?” He pulled his hand away from it slowly and inspected the blood. “No, I think it’s the poison doing that…” He took a step closer once more, and this time, Kaito let him. He lifted his gaze to meet Ouma’s, who blinked up at him.

“Momota-chan.”

“Get on the ground,” Kaito instructed, placing his hand on Ouma’s uninjured shoulder. Ouma looked confused for a moment, then complied under the pressure and shifted to his knees.

“Is this an agreement?” Ouma asked, flinching when Kaito kneeled as well and moved his hand towards the wound. Ouma’s good arm raised defensively, on reflex, but he lowered it quickly.

Kaito didn’t answer—he was busy inspecting the injury. He hadn’t fired the arrow to kill Ouma, but he couldn’t imagine that it felt very pleasant; the blows they’d traded probably only served to agitate it more. Kaito could’ve laughed that only an hour beforehand, him and Ouma had been screaming and punching each other over a goddamn remote. It felt like such a nonissue in that moment.

“Can you lift this?” Kaito asked, pressing lightly on the area surrounding the entry wound. Ouma rolled his shoulder the slightest bit, then grimaced.

“Not really.”

“Alright,” Kaito answered automatically. When he’d been shot in the inside of his forearm, he’d ripped the arrow out immediately. Vaguely, he could still feel the wound throbbing, but it was only a fraction as painful as the tightness in his chest. “I’m gonna pull this out, okay?”

Ouma rolled his eyes, but Kaito could feel his body tense at the words. “About time you took responsibility, Momota-chan. Say, do astronauts know much about crossbow injuries?”

Kaito could not, in his past year of training, recall any time the topic of crossbows had come up.

Ouma sighed. “Didn’t think so. Okay, I’m ready when you are!”

_There’s that weird fucking enthusiasm again,_ Kaito thought, bracing his left hand against Ouma’s shoulder and wrapping his right one around the arrow. Pulling overhand seemed too awkward, so he adjusted his grip until he felt he was positioned well enough to tear the arrow out in a single, clean pull. Ouma exhaled shakily next to his ear.

Kaito hesitated just long enough to consider counting down from three, and then decided: _fuck it_. He tightened his hold and tore as forcibly as he could.

“Ah—!” Ouma yelped, jolting forward with the momentum of the pull. His head dropped quickly to Kaito’s shoulder, and from only their few points of contact, Kaito could feel the full-body shiver that worked through Ouma from the top down. The sound the arrow had made while exiting was grotesque, and Kaito swallowed down his own bile while Ouma panted against his shoulder.

“It’s—alright,” Kaito offered, patting the spot his left hand still rested. He tried to recall the words Ouma had chosen while forcing antidote down his throat—they were manipulative, yes, but they _were_ effective at calming him down. “You’re alright. Just—get it together, Ouma. One more.”

Ouma laughed shrilly from where he was slumped. “ _Thanks_ , Momota-chan! Real fucking helpful!”

Kaito was on the brink of nervous laughter himself, but something in him kept it from spilling out. He allowed Ouma another moment of reprise against his shoulder, then shifted backwards so that Ouma could support himself. He faltered momentarily, then lifted his face to look at Kaito.

“I’m okay,” Ouma said, a vice-like grip on the wound. His lower lip was quivering, but it took only a second for him to screw his frown back into an unnatural smile.

“Are you fuckin’ sure, because—“

“I’m sure,” Ouma said, turning on his knees until his back faced Kaito. “Just…get this one, please.” When Kaito hesitated, Ouma continued, “ _Now_ , Momota-chan.”

Kaito inspected the arrow, some thin blade that had just missed slicing through the crisscrossed fabric down Ouma’s spine. It must’ve felt god fucking awful in a spot like that; he wasn’t sure how Ouma was still speaking.

“Fine,” Kaito said. “Fuck. You’re gonna want to lean over some.”

As Ouma did so, Kaito realized that this arrow was still coated with the poison Maki had chosen. God, if—if Ouma had truly drank the antidote, the poison would still be circulating throughout him regardless. It would’ve done nothing; drinking it didn’t make sense. He only hoped that Maki could recall this through her panic.

_Maki_ , he flinched, thinking about the tears she’d shed at the window. For some reason, he’d told her to run—probably so as to not watch him die. She’d seen enough death for a whole lifetime. The same went for Shuuichi. Too many of their friends had been lost already.

“Momota- _chaaan_ ,” Ouma whined, faced away from Kaito with his head down. “If you don’t hurry this up, I’m gonna—“

Ouma’s words transformed into a harsh gasp when Kaito placed a firm hand against his back, grabbed the arrow with his other, and pulled. The same nauseating sound as before accompanied this effort; if Ouma had yelped when the first arrow left his body, he was howling now. Kaito tossed it to the ground easily and put his hands on Ouma’s sides.

“Ah—hh! Ah…oh, _God_ … F-Fucking…”

“Y-You’re okay,” Kaito tried to soothe, running his hands up and down where they rested in some alarm. Ouma was beginning to curl over into himself, low moans escaping his mouth with his slight movements. Kaito had not noticed with the first one, but the now-open wound was oozing more blood down the back of Ouma’s shirt. His heartbeat quickened as he began racing through some sort of treatment for excessive blood loss in his head.

_Fuck_ , Kaito thought, the tiniest bit hysterical. _Maybe Ouma just got his wish. Maybe that reckless action was enough to finish him off._

Ouma hissed something that wasn’t exactly a cry of pain.

“What?” Kaito asked. He leant closer.

“ _L’ggo_ ,” Ouma breathed, his voice trembling.

“What are—”

“Let _GO!_ ” Ouma cried, squirming in Kaito’s grasp. Kaito looked down. He hadn’t realized how tightly he’d been holding on to Ouma. He pulled his hands back hastily; Ouma breathed a sigh of relief and fell the rest of the way forward to the ground.

“Do—“ Kaito faltered, “do you need—“

“Shut up,” Ouma groaned. “Dizzy.”

Dizziness was a sensation Kaito had become too familiar with in the past hour. He reached out again, gently, and placed his hand back on Ouma’s side; hopefully, this was more of a comforting gesture this time around. The least he could offer was comfort, really—on his knees, on the ground, Kaito could recall Ouma striding over to rest a hand on his shoulder when he’d been shot, so…

Ouma allowed his hand to remain.

For some moments, he just lay on the ground, his only noises being ones of quiet, broken pain. Kaito sat there and tried to ignore how anguished it sounded. He tried to ignore everything until Ouma came to. When he finally began to stir, pushing himself up with a soft groan, Kaito put his free hand on Ouma’s right shoulder to support him.

“You doing okay?” Kaito asked.

“Momota-chan,” Ouma rasped. He lifted his gaze to meet Kaito’s, then his eyes flickered down to Kaito’s hand on his waist. “…How touchy.”

“Hm?”

“You really do like me, don’t you?”

Kaito snorted. “Fuck off, kid. Let’s get you up.”

Ouma giggled at his own joke, then took the hand Kaito offered. Standing, Kaito dragged Ouma up with him and helped him rebalance. “Better now?” he asked, squinting at the blood caking Ouma’s shirt.

Ouma’s grin was reappearing already, as if he hadn’t experienced debilitating pain just moments before. He let go of Kaito’s hand and stepped back. Instead of answering his question, Ouma looked directly at Kaito and exhaled audibly.

“That Electrobomb will expire in two hours,” Ouma said, placing a hand on his chest, “and so will I, Momota-chan.”

Coaxing Ouma through the pain of his injuries had afforded Kaito some time to ignore the exact circumstances of their ordeal, but they were, apparently, still fresh in Ouma’s mind.

The plan. Killing Ouma to make sure him and Maki didn’t die for entertainment; to invalidate Monokuma’s authority and prove that he had no true power; to make sure that his surviving classmates escaped safely; to ensure that his late classmates hadn’t died in vain. Ouma was sure that whatever he’d concocted was going to ruin the killing game, and Kaito…truly wanted to believe that. It was refuse for nothing, or comply and risk his life. Ouma certainly had no qualms about dying, and…

He had nothing to lose anymore, anyway.

Kaito sighed and placed a hand behind his head. “I’m gonna fuckin’ regret this one, aren’t I?”

Ouma’s smile grew wider. “Only if you want Harumaki and I to be sad, little pawns!” Ouma thrust his shaky hand out towards Kaito. Kaito looked down at it as if it were something dirty.

“Really,” he said, placing his hand in Ouma’s after a beat.

Ouma tightened his grip and shook Kaito’s hand with vigor. “Really! Accomplices it is, Momota Kaito.”

Ouma’s smile distorted to something dark, a quirk that Kaito had already grown far too used to, but then it quickly subdued. “We have two hours,” he said.

“Fuck,” Kaito muttered, closing his eyes. “Fuck, okay. You better start explaining this entire damn plan of yours right now, then.”

Ouma pulled his hand back, and Kaito opened his eyes to him crossing his arms. Despite his deteriorating appearance, the sense of purpose he carried was almost physical. “I thought you’d never ask, Momota-chan! Come on,” he said, turning to head for the door.

Kaito followed at a brisk pace, trying to ignore the pain in both his arm and his chest. While Ouma seemed to have recovered enough from having the arrows ripped out of him, the greater effect of the poison was still apparently impending. Kaito swallowed, not looking forward to what was going to transpire over the next couple hours.

“ _If_ we’re being recorded for an audience,” Ouma started, turning to Kaito once he was stood in the hangar bay, “then the Electrobomb has knocked out all the cameras and audio devices. The mastermind won’t have access to anything that happens here, so…” Ouma’s eyes darted around the room. “We’re alone. Monokuma can’t get around the Exisals.”

“The—what?” Kaito asked, processing for the first time that there were only two Exisals in the room, one of which Maki had ridden in inside of. “I’m fucking missing a ton of details,” Kaito said, holding back the _because you locked me in the fucking bathroom_ that wanted to follow. Ouma shook his head.

“How far back should I start? Wellll,” he contemplated, tapping his chin. “After I dragged your sorry ass here, I made sure that Monokuma couldn’t track me down! That is, he’s outside the hangar being guarded by four of the Exisals.” Ouma spared a glance to the one unmoved by the front of the door. “Or, three, I guess.”

Kaito ignored the barb Ouma had worked into his last statement. He looked over at the toppled Exisal as well. “How the hell did Harumaki manage to get one of those?” Kaito huffed, more to himself than Ouma. Ouma shrugged as if the question were directed at him nonetheless.

“Beats me. If I were to guess, I bet she took an Electrohammer and did it in!” Ouma said. “Hmm, but…she _is_ the Ultimate Assassin, though. Perhaps there were other tricks hiding up her sleeve the whole time.”

Kaito glared over at Ouma, who was smirking right back at him, and he ran a hand down over his face. “I don’t know what you’re trying to provoke out of me, you little bastard, but it’s not happening.”

Ouma’s expression turned into a pout. “Momota-chan’s no fun when he’s serious, is he? Come onnn! You don’t even want to punch me for that?”

Kaito rolled his eyes. “Fuck no. Just keep explaining.”

Ouma was acting far too expressive for someone slowly succumbing to torture serum, in Kaito’s opinion. “Well, if you insist. Anyways, I wanted to make sure Monokuma couldn’t access us for the past couple days, so I kept him under constant surveillance. That way I could plan and not be interrupted.”

“That’s the thing, though,” Kaito said. “What the fuck have you been planning that’s taken this much damn time? You still haven’t told me how we’re going to convince Monokuma that I’m the dead one, anyways.”

Ouma’s teasing expression dropped for a more serious one to take hold.

“Fuck, Ouma—how do you switch your faces so—“

“Yesterday night, I set off an Electrobomb in this room,” Ouma spoke, cutting Kaito off. When he looked sure that Kaito was going to listen, he continued. “I used my last one in the bathroom, in case you already forgot. The reason I used one yesterday was because I wanted to test a theory.”

Kaito was watching Ouma’s face, waiting for a flicker of humor to cross it. When it didn’t, he asked, “What theory?”

Ouma remained solemn and held their eye contact. “When the power is shut off in this room, you can still use the hydraulic press. The only difference is that the safety measure breaks.”

Kaito felt a chill, all of a sudden.

Ouma was stepping closer to him.

“Momota-chan,” he said. “Have you read the instructions?”

Kaito hadn’t, but he had a decent guess as to what ‘safety measure’ meant.

“If this is…” Kaito whispered, looking down at Ouma’s grim face. “Do you mean…”

“The press can’t sense living organisms anymore. Yesterday, when I used the bomb, I held my arm under it. It came preeetty close to taking the whole thing off, but I pulled back just in time! But, either way, it confirmed exactly what I’d suspected. If a person got underneath of it with the power cut, it wouldn’t stop on its own.”

So… Agreeing to kill someone sounded much easier in theory than in practice.

Ouma must’ve noticed Kaito’s sick expression, as he covered his mouth with a soft giggle. “Aw, Momota-chan! Did you think I had something else in store for my demise?”

“I—y-yeah, actually, I fucking did! Are…are you actually serious? You want to go out like that?”

Ouma squinted back up at Kaito. “If I _want_ to? Ehh, it wouldn’t be my first choice. That would be tripping accidentally and falling into a volcano! Though, this is a limited killing game, Momota-chan. I don’t get any other choice.” Ouma looked so obscenely sincere in that moment that, when he reached out and took Kaito’s right hand in both of his, Kaito let him. He wasn’t sure if it was an actual attempt at consolation or just Ouma mocking him.

“You shook my hand,” Ouma said. “You can’t just back out of this now, Momota-chan.”

Kaito watched Ouma, quietly on edge, letting him hold his hand. “I know,” he finally said. “I…wasn’t planning on it. I know I agreed.”

Ouma held Kaito’s gaze for another moment, then pinched his thumb.

“Ow—hey! What the fuck, you little—“

“Nishishi!” Ouma giggled, his hands covering his mouth. “Ah, Momota-chan! You really do think you can trust me with anything now, don’t you? Joke’s on you!”

“I—what the fuck!” Kaito said, inspecting the nail mark now dug into his skin. “Am I not supposed to!? We agreed to end the killing game together!”

“Didn’t mean I agreed to be nice to you!” Ouma smiled. “Ah, who’s the naïve one now?”

“Two hours of your life left, and you spend it doing this,” Kaito hissed. “You really are a liar to your damn core, aren’t you?”

Ouma seemed to actually think about that for a second before responding. “Hm, well. At least it makes two of us.”

Kaito felt like he’d been slapped in the face. “Wait, what the hell is that supposed to mean!? You think I go around doing the kind of shit you do for fun?”

“That’s your business,” Ouma shrugged, “not mine. But it doesn’t mean you aren’t a liar. In fact, you’re even lying to yourself, aren’t you?”

Kaito couldn’t recall an insult of Ouma’s that enraged him quite like that one did. “Don’t fucking say shit like that. I’m not lying to—“

“Oh?” Ouma asked, inspecting his nails. Kaito gritted his teeth at the display of indifference, but Ouma continued before he could speak. “If you’re not lying, then what happened in the bathroom?”

Kaito thought back on everything that occurred there. Did Ouma mean he’d lied when he said Ouma would be alright? That was a figure of fucking speech, and he’d meant it about Ouma getting over the pain of the arrows being removed, not—

“You _are_ lying to yourself, Momota-chan! I didn’t know you had it in you.” Ouma rushed to finish his prying before Kaito could speak. “When you fainted,” he said, and Kaito shut his mouth. Ouma raised an eyebrow. “Just your cold, right? All that blood”—Ouma gestured to Kaito’s chest with his left hand—“is perfectly normal?”

Kaito was silent as he looked down at himself; sure enough, there was blood spilled across his white clothing. It must’ve happened during his fit in the bathroom. He wanted—to yell back, that the blood could be normal, and everyone experienced dizzy spells from time to time, but. But, really, he knew…

“Thought so. Don’t worry, though, Momota-chan. I know a thing or two about lying to yourself, or whatever.”

Kaito opened his mouth, then closed it.

Ouma was right.

God, he fucking hated it when Ouma was right.

“That’s—“

“—A fucking lot,” Kaito interrupted, “coming from a little paranoid freak like you, right? You think anyone cares about one lie to protect them? The truth is that they just fucking don’t. I’m not a fucking liar for not talking about—whatever the hell this is. Why are you so fixated on that shit when you’ve never had faith in anyone or anything?”

Ouma’s face went blank.

Of everything Kaito had seen from him up to that point, an unreadable expression was the most unusual. In fact, it was so unusual that it was managing to be off-putting. He’d…been harsh, yeah, but—

“It’s not even funny how hypocritical you are. It’s just sad.”

Kaito blinked. “Huh?”

“You think people enjoy being lied to for protection? How badly did Harukawa-chan and Saihara-chan react when they saw you choke up blood for the first time?”

“That’s—that’s got nothing to do with—“

“They’d been convincing themselves, undoubtedly, that you were being honest with them. Probably, Saihara-chan is in his room right now, telling himself that you’re safe and happy and leaving this place with him. You’re dumb as a rock, Momota-chan. You don’t know anything.”

“W-What the hell!? Stop talking like you know shit!”

“You really don’t see the full potential of lying, huh? Cause you don’t use it correctly. You’ve just been using it to hurt people. Gonta-kun, for example—“

“Shut the fuck up!” Kaito yelled, taking strides towards Ouma, who only smiled. “You think _I_ hurt Gonta? You fucking _killed_ him for a story!”

“And _you_ told him he was innocent so much that he believed it! Don’t you get it!? Your stupid little trust game just makes everything here worse!”

Kaito found his face very close to Ouma’s, both of them breathing roughly and flushed with emotion. Ouma’s neutral expression had contorted to one of rage halfway through his screaming, and Kaito knew his was the same. He wanted to respond to Ouma’s bullshit claims about Gonta, but something else left his mouth instead.

“What’s this, then?”

Ouma blinked a few times, then tilted his head to the side. “What’s what?”

“This—alliance, partnership, whatever the fuck you want to call it. You said it yourself—we shook hands, and you’re explaining your plan to ruin the killing game to me right now. Hell, I agreed to end your life with that goddamn handshake! Who says I’m not the fucking mastermind?”

Ouma chose to respond to the last part of his questioning with a laugh. “Ha! Momota-chan is _waaay_ too stupid to be the mastermind!”

“Shut up, Ouma. You fucking trust me.”

“I don’t _trust_ you,” Ouma clarified. “I’m _trusting_ you. There’s a great difference.”

“That’s not the point. The point is that we _can_ trust each other.”

“Ooh, oh boy! Here it is! Here he goes!”

“Don’t fucking start like that! I’m serious!”

“Look, Momota-chan, I’d _looove_ to be the subject of one of your little heroic spiels, but we’re on a timed schedule, so—“

“Well this can’t move forward if we don’t clear the air! I want you to know that you can trust me, and I trust you.”

Ouma let out a huff of laughter. “Nobody _aaasked!_ We don’t have time to talk about—“

“Yes we do,” Kaito said, reaching out to grab Ouma by the wrist. God, he was so…frail. It was easy to forget how small he was, even covered in blood, even dying of poison, when his personality was so large. Ouma looked at Kaito’s fingers wrapped around him with some surprise, then looked back up to meet his eyes.

“Rely on anything else, right?” Kaito said. Ouma blinked. “Anything besides what I feel? Then I will, Ouma. You’ve given me no fucking reason to trust you other than what you figured out about the game. It makes sense. Your claims gotta be right, so I’ll believe you. And— _me_. When you created this plan, you were sure you’d be using me, huh? That’s not the case. I want to help you—I’m _gonna_ help you stop the mastermind. I’m already part of this. There’s no logical reason to believe I’d help you in the first place. But I am, and you’ve got to trust that now.”

Ouma was staring up at Kaito, silent. He’d made no attempt to pull his wrist out of Kaito’s grasp, and Kaito loosened it slightly, giving him the chance to. Still, Ouma remained in place, looking intensely as ever into Kaito’s face. Perhaps the rant was a little too passionate, Kaito wondered. Blood seemed to be prickling his skin.

“Or, uh, some shit like that,” Kaito finished.

Ouma’s stare slowly turned back into a grin.

“Momota-chan,” Ouma said.

Kaito looked at him.

“What’s your favorite color?”

“…Huh?”

“Your favorite color,” Ouma repeated, taking a step closer to Kaito. His free hand grabbed at Kaito’s jacket. “You’re going to kill me. I think I have a right to know my killer’s favorite color, after all.”

Ouma hardly ever fucking made sense. Kaito should’ve told him to piss off, or pay attention, or anything like that; it was the kind of response he deserved, acting like he did. Instead, Kaito found himself saying, “It’s, uh. It’s purple.”

Ouma giggled. “Nishishi, I should’ve guessed, Momota-chan… The way you dress, after all…”

When the two of them had been arguing, Kaito found himself focusing far more on Ouma’s words than his presence. Now that he had the chance to look again, he nearly recoiled; Ouma’s skin was turning the palest shade of blue, and he was shivering in place as though he were terribly cold. The time constraint was still hanging above their heads, and they’d wasted several minutes yelling at each other. Kaito didn’t even know the majority of the plan yet. He freed Ouma’s wrist, and Ouma freed his jacket.

“That’s it then, huh?” Kaito asked.

Ouma exhaled slowly. “If there were more time, Momota-chan…”

“I know,” Kaito answered. He shifted uncomfortably. “I shouldn’t have, uh...yeah. Sorry. Time and shit.”

Ouma shook his head. “Just…forget it, right now. We need to make sure you understand everything that has to happen.” After a moment, Ouma added, “ _And_ don’t screw it up.”

“Right,” Kaito agreed, not annoyed enough to start another fight in their circumstances. “I’ll listen. Go ahead.”

Ouma watched Kaito for a second more, then turned to walk towards the center of the room. Kaito followed after him, slightly embarrassed.

“Remember, the goal is to have a trial where the victim can’t be identified,” Ouma said, taking the stairs to the press control panel. “Or, identified as me. That’s why I need to be…crushed, under the hydraulic press. After it drops on me, you have to destroy the wiring that lets it run. We can’t let anybody lift it to figure out I’m under there.”

“Then how’re we gonna convince ‘em it’s me?”

“First?” Ouma said. He shrugged. “With your jacket.”

Kaito spared a glance down at himself. “My jacket?”

“We leave the sleeve hanging out, and it gets crushed with me. Everyone walks in and assumes you’re dead.” Kaito must’ve been making a face, because Ouma snorted. “Sorry…I forgot. It’s a pretty dramatic sacrifice for you to make, huh?”

“Hey!” Kaito quipped, self-conscious. “It’s not…ideal, or whatever, but if we’re ending the game with it…”

Ouma didn’t say anything.

Something else was bothering Kaito. “Wait, now that I’m thinking about it… I’m just going to skip the trial then, right? Obviously if I showed up, everyone would know I’m alive.”

Ouma let out a tiny hum from where he stood. “No. That’s why there were only four Exisals on guard duty, Momota-chan.”

The implication was evident. “Wait, wait,” Kaito said anyway, “you can’t fucking mean—“

“Come up here, if taking fives steps won’t kill your lungs!” Ouma called, walking further down the platform. Now that Ouma mentioned it, Kaito was feeling a bit winded from all the yelling he’d done; what confused him most, though, was that Ouma apparently wasn’t.

“What is that?” Kaito asked, holding too tightly to the handrail on the stairs. Ouma was waving some thick book that he’d picked up from the panel.

“Your script,” Ouma said simply, passing it to him.

“What fucking script?” Kaito asked, turning the book over. It was nearly the size of a damn telephone book, with nothing on the cover. Kaito flipped it open to a random page.

“ _It was in the warehouse, but I brought it to the hanger, just in case_ ,” he read aloud. His eyes skimmed further over the writing.

“Holy _shit_.”

“It’s—“

“I mean— _holy shit_ , Ouma.”

Ouma was picking up a video camera that’d been resting on the control panel. Kaito looked up from the script. “Is that for—“

“Making sure there’s no doubt that you’re dead, Momota-chan.”

Kaito was silent. Ouma had written to show a video of himself being crushed under the hydraulic press. “…How’re we gonna do that?”

“Well, there’s no way to edit the footage on there…plus, there’s no time to sneak to a computer and change anything, and we’d leave evidence, so… I was thinking we could just use the pause button.” At Kaito’s blank expression, Ouma continued, “I would record you under the press until you were out of the frame, and then we would switch places. And then…”

Kaito didn’t like the face Ouma was pulling, and the idea of trusting him to not change his mind last second and let Kaito die…he filed those thoughts away for later and looked back down at the script. A smile was beginning to bloom on his face.

“You’re a crazy motherfucking bastard,” Kaito laughed, reaching out to ruffle Ouma’s already disheveled hair. Ouma stilled, as if caught off guard, then began smoothing his hair without a word. “We’re really gonna do this, huh? We’re really gonna end this fucking killing game.”

“That’s the plan,” Ouma agreed, taking the script back from Kaito and setting it down with the camera. “We need to go over that, but for now, we gotta stage the scene.”

“You’re all business when you want to be, aren’t you?” Kaito asked. He’d had doubts, but this was looking like—like they could pull it off. He followed Ouma back down the stairs.

“Mmh, when I have to be, Momota-chan!” Ouma responded, heading towards the bathroom. He began unwinding his scarf from his neck, then tossed it on the floor. Kaito paused.

“What are you doing?”

Ouma opened the door. “You have to drag me to the press,” he said.

“Like, across the floor?” Kaito asked. “What the fuck?”

“What else, Momota-chan? Jeeeez, don’t you know basic vocabulary?”

Kaito watched Ouma’s back as he lowered himself to the floor, shakily, holding the doorframe with his left hand. “That’s…”

“Hurry it up, Momota-chan!” Ouma called over his shoulder. “We don’t have all day!”

“What the fuck is this for?” Kaito asked, heading over to where Ouma was sitting, his arms crossed on his knees. Ouma glanced behind him to watch Kaito approach and lifted his left arm when he was close enough.

“To convince everyone else that I pulled your body from the bathroom to the press without interruption. Gotta make them think you died there first, since they’ll assume the safety measure was working.”

“That’s…a little convoluted,” Kaito said, reaching out to grasp Ouma’s wrist. What else, up until that point, he hadn’t considered the reaction his friends would have to stumbling upon the scene the next day. Shuuichi _had_ said that they were coming to rescue him in the morning...

Kaito clenched his teeth. God, Shuuichi. The others, too. Maki would have to return to the scene of the crime, probably convinced that he’d already died from the poison. And Kiibo, Shirogane, and Yumeno never _were_ good at handling blood and gore…

His heart wanted to hurt for them—and for all it could, it _did_ —but a seed of doubt had worked its way in there. Ouma had to be right about the mastermind filming their torment for an audience. If it were someone among them, then one of those five had to be the culprit. Still, he wanted to believe that Shuuichi and Maki would never do such a thing to him—or anyone. The same went for the other three.

Kaito stifled a laugh at the thought of what Ouma would say to him if he’d said any of that out loud.

Ouma, in turn, was twisting his cold wrist in Kaito’s hand. “Momota-chan!” he yelled, now staring up at Kaito in the face of his hesitation. “Start dragging now, or I’m gonna keel!”

Kaito looked down. Ouma had very pronounced collarbones; he had never noticed before. Well—he hadn’t had the chance to. Was that normal? If his collarbones were prominent, his ribcage must’ve been even more so. It seemed unhealthy.

Kaito shook his head. He was stalling.

“Give me that,” he said, leaning in closer to take Ouma’s right wrist as well.

Ouma hesitated, but he let him. “Just…don’t screw it up even more.”

Kaito looked at the hole in Ouma’s shirt, splattered with blood. His own arm was still tender from the arrow he’d been shot with, but it was in a significantly less vital spot than Ouma’s, who seemed to be struggling to fully control his right arm. “Are you gonna be okay?” he asked, readjusting his grip. If he pulled Ouma overhand, he figured, he wouldn’t have to drag his head along the floor.

“Does it matter, Momota-chan?” Ouma sighed.

_Yes_ , Kaito thought.

But then he wasn’t sure why the response was so automatic or where his reasoning actually came from. In reality, it probably _didn’t_ matter. Ouma would be dead within the next hour. But…he still didn’t want to go and deliberately hurt the kid.

Kaito sighed back. “Fine, Ouma. Let’s go.”

Ouma stretched his legs out in front of him when Kaito started pulling; though the blood probably should’ve dried for the most part, three steps out revealed that it was still wet enough to stain the floor amply. When Kaito looked down at Ouma’s face, it was twisted in pain. A low sound left his slightly parted, slightly blue lips.

“Is—it—“

“Staining,” Kaito breathed, watching Ouma’s blood paint the tiles. “Yeah, it is. Just hang in there, kid.”

The rest of the trip was as dreadful as the start. Pulling Ouma by his arms and across his back must have been agonizing on his injuries; the noises that left his mouth bordered on inhuman, however soft they were. When they had neared the arrow on the floor that Kaito had ripped from his own arm earlier that night, he’d paused to kick it aside. Ouma huffed what could have been a laugh, then rasped, “We’ll need that.” Kaito ignored his statement, and they continued the path until they reached the machine, Ouma shaking more than ever; at their arrival, Kaito doubled over in another fit.

“F— _fuck_ ,” he managed between deep, wheezing coughs, blood spilling from his mouth and onto the floor. Ouma, propped against the side of the press, squinted up from the ground to watch him.

“Don’t…hack up a lung,” he advised, a shuddering breath accompanying his words. Ouma was obviously in pain from the stress he’d put on his injuries, but he seemed to be recovering better than Kaito was. “If you die now…we’re screwed.”

Kaito wanted to yell back, ‘ _You’re not funny_ ,’ but he couldn’t find the chance to for another several moments. Ouma blinked slowly, his left hand supporting his shoulder, until the fit diminished to simple, unsteady breathing.

“Aliiive?” Ouma questioned.

Kaito faced the floor, his hair half a mess in his face, his arms wrapped around his midsection. “Feels…like someone’s using my ribcage as a fuckin’ knife rack.”

Ouma snorted. “ _That’s_ a metaphor, Momota-chan. But pull yourself together. There’s work to do.” He paused, and Kaito looked over. Ouma’s hair was just as messy as his, and his skin was still pallid. “Get…some toilet paper, or something. Wipe up everything you just spit on the floor.”

Kaito groaned. Ouma, apparently, no longer had kind words to offer. “Yeah, alright. No need to be so fuckin’ bossy about it, though.”

As Kaito began to retrace his steps backwards along the blood trail they’d left, Ouma called over, “Grab your arm-arrow, Momota-chan! Leave it with the others in the bathroom!”

Kaito groaned again, but he obeyed regardless. “And your scarf?” he called.

“…Leave it for now.”

Ouma watched him intently as he approached the machine once more. Kaito raised an eyebrow, a tacit invitation for Ouma to speak, but he stayed quiet. _Well_ , Kaito thought. _Whatever_. Ouma could be weird on his own time, but Kaito was busy. He dropped to the floor to take care of the blood he’d spilled.

“Don’t worry,” Ouma finally said. “I won’t make you strangle anyone with that.”

Kaito looked up.

Of course this was starting again.

As if he hadn’t just been keening on the fucking floor, Ouma was watching him with some dark, amused expression; it was as if his demeanor had done a 180 in seconds. Kaito was used to Ouma switching tones, but the random, pure malice was still something…newer.

 “What the fuck is the matter with you?” Kaito asked, his voice low, then resumed his scrubbing. He was determined to ignore such a blatant attempt at riling him up, wherever the hell it had come from; they’d wasted far too much time screaming about Gonta earlier.

“Oh?” Ouma smiled. “Did that joke hurt Momota-chan’s poor, brittle feelings?”

“Just shut the fuck up,” Kaito said, still working. “It’s like you’re determined to make me hate you.”

Ouma hummed lightly. “Yup, that’s it! I care _that_ much about you. In fact, I’m suffering like never before—not because of the poison, but because I’m scared you might die soon! What _ever_ will we do without you?”

When Kaito lifted his gaze to meet Ouma’s, Ouma flinched. Something in Kaito’s expression was, apparently, bothering him. “Don’t pity me!” he snapped, looking disgusted. “Don’t make such ugly, pathetic faces!”

“I’m—not! I don’t, bastard!” Kaito yelled back, balling the wet paper in his hands. Despite the bite to his words, something that _did_ feel uncomfortably close to pity was beginning to burn in the pit of his stomach. One trip across the floor had Ouma looking worse than he’d ever seen him before, and the sudden cruelty seemed a bit too much like…some sort of defense, or something. Was that it? Ouma braced himself against the press and gradually worked his way back up to his feet.

“Go flush that,” Ouma sneered. He turned to limp back to the staircase, and by the time Kaito had left and returned, he was sitting at the top with the script.

Kaito caught the book when Ouma threw it at his chest. “Start reading,” he demanded.

“What the fuck got you so pissed off—“

“Your dumb ass needs to memorize most of that before the trial so you won’t stutter like an idiot!”

“Hey!” Kaito barked, stepping over Ouma’s shoulder to sit on the platform with him. Ouma spun to face him, crossing his legs. “I don’t stutter like a fucking idiot! It’s not my fault you wrote…” Kaito trailed off, flipping through the script. There had to be well over a hundred pages in there, and some had his name written on them. He read closer.

“ _The Luminary of the Stars has arrived! This time for real!_ ” Kaito recited. “…Fucking hell.”

Despite his lingering malice, Ouma did seem amused by that reaction. “Aaah, found something you like?”

Kaito scoffed. “No way I say shit like this, Ouma. _Woah there! Chill!_ The Luminary of the Stars would never—!”

Kaito paused.

Ouma clicked his tongue.

“A-Anyways,” Kaito cleared his throat. “Isn’t this kind of…”

_Fucked_ , Kaito wanted to say, but didn’t. If successful, he would fully convince the others that it was Ouma piloting the Exisal, but…taking the time to manipulate them specifically to hurt their feelings seemed excessively sadistic. Then again, it _was_ exactly what Ouma would do, and if he were to fully commit, it might be a necessary part of the act. Besides, he’d be revealing himself at the end, wouldn’t he? Anything he did inside that robot would be forgiven once he explained himself. Explained what Ouma wanted him to do.

And Ouma had…written this full thing out in his free time. Written it out specifically for _him_ —he wanted Kaito to emulate his own self while piloting the Exisal. If Kaito were being honest, the extensiveness was completely fucking impressive, but something about it also…

…Something about it also what?

Ouma was dying, horrifically, right in front of him. He’d been a little _shit_ , _yes_ , but Kaito had never once wished him dead. He hadn’t even hated him—just _resented_ him—and wasn’t it impossible not to, after all he had done? But watching any person’s suffering was intrinsically awful. Of course he felt bad for Ouma.

And yet. There was still something…else, in Kaito, that was just fully nauseated by the scenario.

Ouma had been alone in the hangar for days. Kaito had done the same thing—in the bathroom, no less, which was colder, darker, and smaller—and _because_ of Ouma! He was the one who had locked him in there. But…it still wasn’t the same, was it? Kaito hadn’t known Ouma was—

_Meticulously plotting his own death._ That was just sick.

And…it must have been lonely.

For some reason, Kaito felt a rush of anger seize him. _Was_ it anger? God, maybe he was just fucking delirious—why the hell did that make him mad? He didn’t have time to deal with whatever he was feeling.

Kaito flipped to the back of the script. Several of the end pages were blank, and Kaito’s earlier suspicion that Ouma planned this out with the intent to use him seemed clearly proven. He’d agreed because of the circumstances, and Maki, and the poison, but he wondered what Ouma’s original threat would have been to blackmail him into agreeance. Perhaps he would’ve kept the ringleader act up, threatening his friends if Kaito failed to comply.

Kaito wanted to ask all of those questions and more, but he didn’t. Ouma had plainly spurned his pity. So, instead, he said, “Hey. Wait. Won’t the others recognize my voice when I’m talking to them?”

Ouma’s eyebrows went up. “Oh, I forgot,” he said _._ “There’s a voice changer in the Exisal. It can switch between any 16 of the original participants.”

Kaito blinked. “The hell? Why the fuck would the Monokubs need that?”

“Who knows,” Ouma half-shrugged, his left shoulder moving. “I checked earlier, and it works just as intentioned.”

“That’s pretty damn creepy. How did they even get some shit like that?”

Ouma shot him a tired look, then nodded at the still-open book in Kaito’s hands. “Momota-chan, get to work before you sneeze and expel your soul.”

“Uh,” Kaito said, doing his best to ignore whatever the fuck that meant. “Right.”

The next half hour passed in relative silence, beside Kaito’s occasional snort or complaint or recitation of Ouma’s writing. The scale of his preparations were fucking immense; vaguely, Kaito was starting to wonder whether this was truly a two-day project, but he refused to ask. In places, lines were scribbled over to cover dialogue Ouma had apparently been unsatisfied with, and there was the occasional doodle in the margins of pages with strange interactions. Kaito didn’t get much time to look at them—Ouma was working rather efficiently to instruct Kaito on the exact delivery of certain lines.

Kaito’s face felt hot. “Okay, dude. No way.”

Ouma raised an eyebrow. “What’s wrong with it?”

“What the fuck is _right_ with telling people you can pilot this shit with your nipples?”

Ouma blinked slowly. “It’s _in-character._ You’re no fun.”

Kaito flipped a few pages.

“Fuck, you want me to say _what_ to Yumeno?”

Ouma let out a stiff laugh, his head hung over the script from where he sat opposite of Kaito. “Oh? You don’t think she’ll reciprocate my feelings, Momota-chan? What a poor, awful thing to imply to a dying man…”

In the minutes of careful planning, Kaito had almost forgotten Ouma’s actual state. The passing time had only served to weaken his voice further, and the strain corrupting it was now unmistakable. Ouma describing himself as _dying_ almost scared Kaito, but Ouma seemed to be indifferent to it. Hadn’t he been instigating a fight not too long ago?

Before Kaito could stop himself, he’d said, “I wish I could understand you.”

God—where had that even _come from?_ Apparently, his mouth was processing his thoughts before his mind could. He thought he’d decided he _didn’t_ want to understand Ouma, but then—

“No,” Ouma said, and Kaito looked back at him. His face was neutral. “You don’t.”

…Was it practiced neutrality?

“Well,” Kaito said, and he ran a hand through his hair. Fuck, where was he even supposed to go from there? “You don’t know that. You say a whole lot of weird shit, and none of it ever makes sense. Hard not to wonder sometimes.”

Ouma blinked. “You’re a real weirdo, Momota-chan. What would you possibly want to know about me?”

Kaito snorted. Well, if Ouma was asking.

“You really wanna know? Why you’re so fuckin’ crazy, for one,” Kaito said. “How you came up with such a crazy fucking bullshit plan.”

Ouma didn’t react.

“…Why the hell you wanna hide yourself,” he continued. “What made you decide that lying was, I don’t know, fun? Convenient? Or,” he said, now that Ouma was looking up at him, “something smaller. Like, why you decided those pants were a good idea—“

“A fashion lecture from an astronaut?” Ouma cut him off. “You’re the one who thinks it’s cute to wear big, clunky suits…”

“Those are for safety, you little—!” Kaito began, then paused to laugh. It came out forced, and without humor. “Ah, God. I don’t know. You’ll…you’ll be gone soon, or whatever. It’s just…I don’t fuckin’ know, weird, I guess. To kill someone you know so little about.”

“Is it?” Ouma asked, squinting at him. “Plenty of random crimes occur every single day. Or, _did_ , if we truly are the last surviving human beings…”

Kaito shot him a look. Ouma rolled his eyes. “Which we’re not. We can’t be...”

Ouma was looking somewhere to Kaito’s right, apparently deliberating. His thumb raised to his mouth; Kaito watched as Ouma scraped at his lower lip, the movement hardly perceptible.

“…When you asked me my favorite color earlier,” Kaito began, and Ouma’s eyes shifted to his own. “I didn’t ask yours, so. What is it?”

“Hmm… It’s brown.”

It only took Kaito a second to recognize it. “That’s a lie.”

Ouma grinned slightly. “Ah, caught me, Momota-chan. I’ll concede.”

“Another thing,” Kaito said, since he was on a roll. “You always call yourself some evil supreme leader… The hell is all that about?”

“Nishishi,” Ouma giggled, his whole hand now covering his mouth. “It’s a _seeecret_.”

“Really?” Kaito asked. “You can’t tell me about it even now?” After the words left his mouth, Kaito cringed; the connotation behind the word _now_ wasn’t a pleasant one.

Ouma didn’t seem to catch it or care. “Maybe once I’m dead, you can ask me about it via Ouija board.”

“Th-That’s not funny!”

Ouma laughed weakly. “No, I suppose not. Momota-chan and the occult, of course…”

_Not what I meant_ , Kaito almost said. He managed to bite his tongue on that one.

“So, are we done with the 20 questions?” Ouma asked, raising an eyebrow. “Or are you still going to cry on me? I didn’t realize you were such a sentimental guy. It’s kind of gross.”

Kaito laughed again without thinking. “You’re too damn prepared.” _And paranoid._ “And…you don’t sound too hot.”

Ouma didn’t look too hot, either. If he was normally put together, he was now anything but; his hair was limp, sticking out in odd directions, his clothes were still stained with blood, and without his scarf, he looked so…delicate. Like you could reach over and just…shatter him. Kaito cleared his throat. “Did you want to…”

Ouma frowned and tapped the bound script in Kaito’s hands. “Sounds like someone’s just whining about having to do some work for once.”

“Eh?” Kaito said. “Wh—I’m not whining! There’s just…a lot of different scenarios planned out here.”

Really, there were an uncomfortable amount of scenarios planned out in the script; Ouma had been thorough in a way Kaito hadn’t assumed he could be. There were barbs to fire casually to sound more in-character, false evidence to confuse leads at the trial, and suggestions to derail any sort of assumptions Shuuichi could make about the crime scene. However, Ouma apparently hadn’t been able to predict Maki breaking in in an Exisal.

“Yup,” Ouma confirmed with a nod. “There have to be. Not taking any chances.”

“And if Harumaki tells everyone about what happened earlier?” Kaito asked, flipping back and forth between pages. Ouma had written out insults to throw her way and even how to respond in event of her attacking the Exisal, but there weren’t any mentions of crossbows or poisons or—getting shot on impulse.

“Then you improvise,” Ouma shrugged. Kaito looked up at him in some alarm; he couldn’t actually expect Kaito to—

“Jeeeez, way to panic, Momota-chan. Hundreds of pages of material to work with, and you don’t think you’ll be able to sound like me? You must be a really stupid actor.”

“Hey!” Kaito shouted, an automatic response to Ouma calling him stupid. “I’m just fuckin’ trying to—“

“But it’s not like she will,” Ouma continued, speaking over him. “Harukawa-chan thinks she killed you, right? What reason would she have to tell everyone about that?”

“Because…” Kaito started, then paused. He knew Maki, and he knew she wasn’t a bad person. “Because she wouldn’t let anyone else get hurt.”

Ouma giggled lowly, the corners of his mouth twisting upwards. “Nishishi, Momota-chan… You sound too sure about that…”

“I am sure about that!” Kaito countered. “Enough of us have been killed and shit. Harumaki’s not gonna add to that number. She came in here trying to end the game.”

Ouma was still smiling. “And look where it got her.”

_The time limit_ , Kaito reminded himself, just so he wouldn’t punch Ouma in the face. Before he could seriously consider it, Ouma said, “Momota-chan, you need to learn how to work the Exisal.”

Kaito paused. “Think I’ll be fine at it,” he offered, but Ouma had already picked himself up from the stairs to support himself on the handrail.

“Follow me down!” Ouma said, limping his way across the floor. Kaito watched him for a moment. The whole back of his clothing was stained with a stripe of blood, and his movements were unsteady.

The conversation had, once again, derailed quickly. God, Ouma had flipped between so many emotions and topics in the past hour that Kaito felt like he should’ve had whiplash. What was worse, Ouma was acting like—well, like there was no finality is what he was doing. Had he mentally detached from it at one point? He probably couldn’t ignore the physical effects of the poison for much longer. Or was he just lying about not caring?

But that was the other thing. Before all of this had happened, Ouma had been the first person to volunteer for kicking off the killing game. He’d said he was excited to play, and he’d acted the part. So was the indifference the truth? Or was it the earlier passion—he’d said stopping the game was winning. So he wanted to win? But why would he end the game if he liked it so much? Was winning that important? But he said he wanted justice for the deceased, and—

_Ouma is going to die_ , Kaito suddenly thought.

Not disappear. It was nothing temporary. He’d be gone forever.

Everything about Ouma, and this, and whatever they were doing was complicated, but that wouldn’t matter when Ouma stopped…living. Existing. Something tightened in Kaito’s chest for a moment, and for once, he didn’t think it was the need to cough. No matter how tangled and fucked up any facades Ouma spun were, they would just be gone once he was. Kaito probably could have spent years trying to decipher whatever bullshit Ouma was making up, but he’d never get to. No one would. Did Ouma not realize that?

“You’ll have time to read over that later,” Ouma called. Kaito looked up to see Ouma pointing at the Exisal before him. “Come on, you gotta throw yourself in there.”

Was it ever actually going to catch up to him?

Kaito finally dragged himself to his feet. He set the script down on the control panel, then followed to where Ouma stood not too far from the stairs. “The thing doesn’t have a lock, does it?”

“Not if the Electrobomb’s gone off,” Ouma said with a dismissive wave of his hand. “Go ahead, get up there.”

Kaito stared up at the Exisal, then turned back to Ouma. “You know…I am kinda curious.”

Ouma didn’t look at him. “About what,” he said, his tone clipped.

“Whatever’s been holding you ba—”

“No.”

“No—no, what?”

“Momota-chan. I don’t care about whatever stupid thing you’re going to say. We’re busy.”

“You…” Kaito said. “Ouma. I—“

“Don’t care,” Ouma hissed, visibly trembling. “There’s no time.”

Kaito tried to swallow, but his throat felt too dry. To think he’d considered Ouma’s earlier enthusiasm disconcerting—his sedated behavior was far worse. God, it was probably the first time he’d ever wished for Ouma to be obnoxious; it would have distracted from…

“Fine,” Kaito said. “I’m going.”

Kaito stepped around where Ouma clung to the railing and grabbed onto the arm of the Exisal. No matter how much he sized the thing up, it wasn’t going to make it any less confusing. How the hell had the Monokubs managed to control them? He braced one foot against the platform, then slipped trying to get his other leg up onto its midsection.

Behind him, Ouma made a sound that could have been a laugh. Kaito sighed and readjusted his stance.

“ _Humpty Dumpty sat on a wall_ ,” Ouma recited suddenly.

Kaito started. He twisted his neck back to glare at Ouma. “Hey!”

“ _Humpty Dumpty had a great—_ “

Kaito cut him off with a groan and faced the Exisal again. Well, it was still better than Ouma saying nothing, he guessed; unkindness was better than silence, which would have implications for the worse. He tightened his grip on the arm just as Ouma began humming, “ _All the King’s horses and all the King’s men…_ ”

On his second try, Kaito managed to balance himself enough to hit the clasp on the lock. The metal hood lifted off with a hiss, and with a kick-off against the frame, Kaito was able to swing a leg over and into the cockpit. He pulled himself the full way up, then settled into the seat.

Kaito looked down at Ouma, who was still supporting himself on the railing. “What now,” he said, but his eyes had already been drawn to the array of buttons and switches lining the interior around him.

Ouma called, “Don’t—“ at the same time Kaito said, “The hell is this?” and pushed an out-of-place dial forward. Behind him, he could hear the guns on the Exisal begin to fire up.

Kaito dragged the dial back instantly, and the noise died.

Ouma was squinting up at him.

“Uh,” Kaito said, ignoring the warmth in his face. “I meant to do that.”

Ouma shook his head. “Idiot. Do you see…the buttons, in front of you?”

“The ones with our names?” Kaito asked. “I do. These are for voice changing, then?”

Ouma nodded. “It’s not too complicated. If you want to move—“

Kaito propelled the machine forward before Ouma could finish his sentence. Of all the shit he’d gone through in the past couple days, this was where he felt most comfortable: piloting something unfamiliar. If he could just close his eyes and not think for a while, it was almost like being back in training…

“Hm,” Ouma breathed as Kaito took a careful step around him. “I see… You’re pretty experienced, then.”

“It’s really not that difficult,” Kaito explained, a small smile on his face. “There’s a whole method to these kinds of things. Seems tricky as fuck at first, but once you understand the basics, it gets easier to work out the rest on your own.”

Kaito bit his tongue at the memory of Maki stumbling in the hangar in her own Exisal. She was crafty—it probably didn’t take her too long to figure it out. It seemed inappropriate to think it was funny, but tomorrow when he saw her and Shuuichi and the others again, they could all laugh, couldn’t they? Laugh at how odd everything had ended up…

“So you’re good at it,” Ouma’s voice carried from below him. Kaito looked down over the edge of the cockpit to where Ouma was staring up at him.

Kaito grinned. “The damn best,” he said, but then he fell silent.

Tomorrow, Kaito would get to see his friends again—hopefully even get them the hell out of this place—and he was fucking ecstatic for it. The past few weeks had been God fucking awful, _obviously_ —being surrounded nonstop by violence and tension and murder tended to take a toll on people. But tomorrow, the game would be over, the mastermind would be proven invalid, and everyone would get to go home.

Well, everyone except…

Ouma didn’t speak as Kaito spun the Exisal back around to the platform and maneuvered it into its original position. Kaito wanted to talk to him, though. He powered the machine off and climbed his way out, making a careful way down the side to stand back on the platform.

Kaito turned to look at Ouma. “Hey,” he said, then coughed hard.

Ouma jolted a little forward. “Momota-chan?”

Kaito was almost annoyed by the concern in his voice as he waved Ouma off, doubling over to cough. _Fuck_. He’d been running on autopilot the whole time, just trying to ignore the pressure in his chest. For a while, it had worked, but now it must’ve been catching up to him; he rested his hands on his knees and slowly picked himself back up after a few rough seconds of wheezing.

“Least it wasn’t wet this time,” Ouma said. “Still bad though, huh?”

Kaito rolled his eyes as he recollected himself. “I’m fine,” he said. “I’m fuckin’ fine, alright? Just ignore this. Cause there’s other shit to do, and you haven’t…” He thought for a moment. “Man, do you have stages to this or something? I’ve just been listening to what you’re saying.”

Ouma squinted at him. “Stages?”

“Yeah,” Kaito shrugged. “Stages. Like, step one: bleed across the floor, step two: go over that whole script thing.”

“We already did that,” Ouma said. “Jeez, Momota-chan. Don’t panic about it. I know how to stage a murder.”

Kaito flinched at that. “Fuckin’ hell, man.” Staging a murder— _his_ murder—was exactly what they were doing, but saying it out loud was a different thing, something harsher and—and Kaito knew he had to face that, but—it still seemed so goddamn _weird_.

Kaito looked at Ouma. Ouma looked back at him and screwed his face up. “What?”

“You’re dying,” Kaito said, as if voicing it would make it more obvious to him. With their eye contact, there came a strange charge in the air; at once, Kaito felt hyperaware of his breathing, his heart in his chest, the deep pain coiled around it, the soft pulsing inside his arm where he’d been shot. He wondered what Ouma felt, if it was anywhere the same as what he was feeling—if it was, Ouma was concealing it well.

Kaito kept looking at him. He’d been looking at him a lot—probably, he reasoned, because he would never get to do it again. Ouma was pale, and his dark hair and strange features just accentuated that. His skin tone reminded Kaito of milk, and Kaito was suddenly thinking about the milk puzzle in his room, the one Shuuichi gave him, pushed back in a corner to be started if there were ever a break in the action around them. There hadn’t been.

In a way, Ouma reminded him of it: some fucked up little thousand-piece puzzle that everyone got too bored or exhausted to solve. Maybe it seems fun at first, or it seems challenging, and then you’re an hour in and realize you can’t actually do it; that fun and challenging are idealized beliefs in the moment, and you’re just some dumbass sitting alone at a table with all these scattered, blank pieces lying around you. What was the point of solving it, even? Your own gratification? To feel accomplishment? The high from that would last far less than the time you poured into figuring the damn thing out. And, then, of course, the worst part: the puzzle itself was blank. You solved all of it just to find there was nothing there at the end.

At least, those were criticisms Kaito had heard of them. _He_ liked milk puzzles.

“You’re dying too,” Ouma said.

Kaito looked back up at his face.

“Haven’t you realized?”

Kaito turned away.

“You said that earlier,” he muttered. “You said—“

“I really only implied it,” Ouma said. “You can’t be lying to yourself that much if that’s what you took from my words. Why’s it matter so much, anyway? You wanted me dead the whole time.”

“Wh—No I didn’t!” Kaito yelled. “Is that what you fucking think? Look, I—come on. Ouma. You’re way too fucking confusing.”

Ouma sighed. “You _love_ to turn to that.”

“No, like. Now I’m fucking curious. We’re doing this because Harumaki showed up, but how were you gonna get me to go along with you if that hadn’t happened? Blackmail?”

“Sure. Threaten to kill you as the mastermind if you didn’t help me. Make some stupid story up.”

“You have too much planned,” Kaito said. “No way you would’ve just—“

“Is Momota-chan sure he didn’t want me dead?” Ouma asked. “You’re sounding realllly mad right now.”

Kaito’s hand went to the inside of his arm, a reflex he didn’t even catch. “You know I didn’t.”

Ouma grimaced. “You voted for me,” he hissed, and Kaito knew immediately what he was referencing, the tension building between them again. “You would’ve thrown your own life away to get me killed.”

“I was fucking mad! You admitted to getting Gonta killed, you know? _And_ Iruma. I wasn’t about to fucking forgive you for that.”

“Oh? And you were mad enough to kill both of us?”

“What about you?” Kaito said. He hated how ready he was to throw a stupid accusation of his own back. “You fucking said that _I_ was the one who killed Iruma when you knew I didn’t! All to yell some stupid shit about being paranoid to me. The fuck was that about!?”

“You called me pure!” Ouma retaliated. As if that was _remotely_ in the same plane as what Kaito had said.

Ouma was still holding shakily onto the railing behind him, and Kaito watched him try to pull himself up taller. “Don’t you feel stupid about that?” he spat. “You should, idiot! I-It’s not—close at all, to—“

“Are you _fucking_ with me?” Kaito asked. “Did that actually offend you or something? Why are you bringing it up _now?_ ”

“Because you were wrong!” Ouma yelled. He slipped the slightest bit, and Kaito moved instinctively to help him. He froze after a step, before he could get close to Ouma, who wasn’t looking at him.

“You’re wrong about a lot of things,” Ouma said, a quiet anger in his words.

Kaito stood in front of him.

“I’ve known I was gonna die for a while… You didn’t, though. Didn’t you? Are you _still_ trying to lie about it? You’re…covered in your own blood.”

“…This is fucked up,” Kaito settled on. “I thought we were done arguing.”

“It’s not an argument. Please… You’re being even worse than I am.”

“Don’t fucking say that,” Kaito sighed. “You know I—“

“What?” Ouma interrupted. “Don’t like being called a liar? It’s true, though. Do you know you’re dying? _Really_ know? I knew it… That’s why you’re here.”

Kaito blinked at him. “ _What?_ ”

“You’re so stupid. I instigated you, Momota-chan… In case of…failure, or something getting messed up, the only one left in immediate danger is you. And you’d be dying anyway. It…wasn’t hard to decide on, you know.”

Kaito didn’t speak.

“I’m cold,” Ouma said after a moment.

Kaito still didn’t speak.

“That’s…probably not good. Hey, Momota-chan… Stop staring at me. We need to move the other Exisal.”

“You’re trying to push me away or something,” Kaito said. “Why?”

“The Exisal,” Ouma said, and pointed towards the front of the hangar. Kaito turned to stare at it—it was the one Maki had broken in inside of and left collapsed on the floor. “You need to move it here. And we’ll make sure everything is together.”

“I don’t fucking get this,” Kaito said. “Fine, what the fuck ever, I’m dying. I’m dying later. You’re dying _now_ , and you’ve practically been making jokes about it this whole time.”

Ouma took a shaky breath, looking somewhere between despondent and exasperated. “Funny. That’s…still less dangerous than lying about it.”

“Why’s that fucking upset you so much? Shouldn’t you be over the damn moon that I’m lying, then? You can say I took your advice or some shit. There’s just…so much that I don’t get about you. Like, I don’t know what the fuck you value, why you’re still trusting me, what this is even _about_ —“

“We’re just pointing fingers. _Momota-chan_ ,” Ouma said, and Kaito was taken aback by the way his voice broke. “The Exisal. Please.”

Kaito blinked at him. “Ouma. You can…” He paused. “If you want to talk to me about…”

“ _Please_. Get the Exisal.”

“…Fuck. Alright.”

The Ouma standing before Kaito, small and injured, was hard to associate with the Ouma who had threatened to kill him just days before; the one he’d attacked after Iruma’s trial, who’d attacked him back; the one who showed up smiling wide in the gym, asking him and his classmates which of them would like to live; the one who had taunted him about ghosts and curses just to watch him squirm; the one who defended his speech about not giving up on life after Hoshi’s trial; the one who did anything but defend his speech about trusting people’s word when Gonta swore up and down that he hadn’t…

Ouma really was impossible to piece together, but Kaito had one infamously stubborn belief in the impossible. He refused to lose faith in him.

That was it. If he hadn’t given up on any of the others, he couldn’t give up on Ouma—especially not now. Even if he failed to make sense. He turned back towards the Exisal at the door and made his way over.

It took under a minute to pilot the machine back in front of the platform where it’d originally been stored, before everything that had happened to them did. It was as heavy and awkward and clunky as the other, but Kaito managed it well enough. Ouma had been watching him quietly, still shivering against the railing as he powered it down and jumped back to the ground. When Kaito landed, he fell a bit too roughly, and another sharp pain raced through his ribs.

He couldn’t get a word out before he was coughing on the floor, collapsing almost as hard as he had in the bathroom earlier. Between the severe choking and the way his eyes were watering, Kaito could still tell he was spitting up more blood than usual; his arms shook as they supported him against the ground, and he let it go for a minute before he even attempted to recollect himself. As it subsided, he took a heavy gasp that sounded like absolute hell. God, he was just getting worse.

“Gross,” Ouma said from above him, and then Kaito laughed up more blood.

“Ouma,” he breathed after a moment.

“Kaito,” Ouma said.

Kaito glanced up at that.

Ouma was perched against the railing, even now. “You’ll have to clean that.”

“…I know,” Kaito said, and grunted as he pulled himself up from the cold floor. “I will, but… What now?”

“Well,” Ouma said. “The arrows are in the bathroom. Wherever you tossed your crossbow, it needs to go in there with it. Don’t wipe any of the blood up. If everyone thinks I attacked you in there, that’s for the best. The antidote bottle…can stay there, too. The label was too destroyed to be decipherable, and if Harukawa-chan fesses up to everything, then just remind her that I drank it. Your jacket is still going to come with me, so when everyone finds the hydraulic press tomorrow, they’ll assume you’re dead. With your help, they won’t be able to see my body. You’ll be locked in the Exisal, waiting for the trial, where you’ll show up and read from the script. Everyone will think you’re me. You’ll play the video where it looks like you were killed. They’ll vote, you’ll reveal yourself, the show is exposed as a fraud, and Monokuma has no choice but to concede alongside the mastermind.”

“H-Holy _shit_ ,” Kaito said. “That’s… You really…”

“Prepared,” Ouma confirmed.

“…Yeah,” Kaito agreed. “Prepared…”

“Mhmm. And now you have to kill me.”

Kaito froze.

“What?” he whispered. He hadn’t meant to whisper; the word came out weak and broken on its own. Kaito cleared his throat before he continued. “No, you—what? I… Right now? I thought there was still…”

“There’s not. And it’s getting really hard to breathe, so…”

This felt like it was coming entirely out of left field. Ouma’s face was impassive and reticent, an odd combination paired with the death sentence he’d just proclaimed for himself. Kaito hoped his surprise was evident enough to rouse a more appropriate reaction out of Ouma, but he just remained quiet and calm.

“Ouma,” Kaito tried to reason, “it hasn’t been two hours. There’s still—“

“Is it _your_ plan?” Ouma asked. “When the Electrobomb is up, the cameras come back on. And if you’re not in the Exisal, well… Everything here will be null.”

“The script. There’s so many—“

“I taught you all the basics… You can work out the rest on your own, since you’re so good at that. You’ll have the time to.”

Kaito stood up and looked away from him. His mind was racing alongside his heart, trying to pry up some other sort of excuse in his gut to hold off on…finalizing, Ouma’s side of the plan. For a lot of reasons.

“I have to find the crossbow,” he said.

Ouma made a little hum sound in his throat. “Okie-dokie.”

Kaito turned to inspect the room.

“I’ll wait, Momota-chan.”

The crossbow, as it turned out, had skidded underneath the control platform into a corner blocked by a leg supporting the hydraulic press. It hadn’t taken too long to find, but it certainly took longer than it should have considering Kaito’s slow, heavy movements; he felt like his legs were about to give in under the rest of his weight, and his lungs were about to give in under the pressure around them. And his throat was about to give in as well, harsh and restricted, and his arms, and stomach, and his eyes were bothering him too, for some reason.

Ouma hadn’t said a word, and as Kaito waved the crossbow at him across the room to show he had recovered it, Ouma shot him a thumbs-up from the railing. Kaito almost let out a laugh at that and walked back towards the bathroom door.

He stood in the doorway for longer than he should have as well, surveying the scene spread before him. Did it tell a convincing enough story? If not, he’d have to be the one to. For two days, all he had known was this room—this room and Ouma’s cheerful, childish voice that remained upbeat between the sessions of planning his death. Kaito set the crossbow down near the arrows and readjusted his jacket as he stood.

He’d be losing that, too.

The scene was set. The bathroom was in order, with the crossbow and arrows and empty bottle strewn to support any testimony Maki could give. The blood trail led from the middle of the room, designated with a splattered puddle, in streaks towards the press, Ouma’s blood masquerading as Kaito’s own. And Kaito would masquerade in return; with the book at the control panel, he’d be able to disguise himself as Ouma for as long as was necessary, depending on the circumstances of the trial. Ouma would die, Kaito might do the same in the next day, and the others would be free.

He hoped it was that easy. Kaito took a stilted breath and closed the door on the evidence.

Ouma was waiting for him where he had remained for the last twenty minutes at least, a semi-permanent fixture along the Exisal platforms. Kaito had wanted to yell to him while looking over their preparations a final time, a comment or question or joke, even, but his chest and throat were still blocked up, so he’d said nothing. Ouma nodded at his return and jumped right back into it.

“Remember, there’s no way to edit the video on the camera. If we—“

“Why did you call your own script ‘in-character’ earlier?” Kaito said.

Ouma blinked at the question. “…Hm?”

“When I asked you about all the weird shit you wrote. Weird, scary, or just fucked up—you’ve…got a good mixture in there—you told me it was in-character. What did you mean when you said that?”

Ouma tilted his head a bit. “Hmm? I really don’t know what _you_ mean. It’s just what I would say. I’m a guy who would do anything to have fun, after all.”

“Then why…? Hey. Just like you’ve got this whole thing planned out, you know exactly what you’d be saying in response to certain shit?”

“Of course,” Ouma said. “Only I know me.” Ouma’s eyes strayed to somewhere beyond Kaito’s shoulder, back towards the platform where his script was resting. “But…I guess you will now, too.”

“I don’t, though,” Kaito stressed. “There’s so fucking much I _don’t_ know about you. And I wish I did.”

There was an odd pause.

“You’re…” Ouma said. “You’re _that_ curious?”

Kaito tried not to think too hard about his answer. Whatever he’d thought about earlier, whatever contradictions of his own he’d tried to decipher in the moment—they didn’t feel important anymore. “I mean… _Yeah_ ,” he admitted. “I _am_. Fucking of course I am. How could I not be?”

Ouma took a short breath. “What don’t you get?”

“You did all this awful fucking shit to us, and—what the hell, what was it _for?_ For this? To ruin the goddamn game? I’m helping you ‘cause I want to end it, but I still don’t know why _you_ would want to do that… All you ever talked about was how much fun you were having.”

Ouma’s grip tightened around the railing. Kaito watched it happen—watched his hands tense up, his eyes fall shut, his head drop forward while his messy hair curtained around his face; Kaito took a step towards him without thinking, his worry a reflex that set him back in motion.

“I was lying,” Ouma said, the words muted, but heated.

Kaito stopped.

“ _Obviously_.”

Huh. Of all the things he’d expected…

“How could there be fun…in playing a game to take people’s lives…?”

Before Kaito could even register that statement fully, Ouma’s head snapped back up, and—

And he was _crying_. Actually crying, Ouma’s face red and angry and blotched with tears running in quick, unsteady trails down his pale skin to collect and drip off his chin and to the floor. Kaito was near ready to retreat, but his legs wouldn’t move, some sort of shock reaction that kept him planted; before he could gain enough sense to snap out of it, Ouma’s left hand was on the front of his jacket, pulling him closer. Like he wanted Kaito to watch. He swayed at the release from the railing, and Kaito, despite how apt he’d just been to run, leaned down to catch him. His millionth reflex to bring the two of them closer.

Ouma’s face was near enough that Kaito feared stupidly for a fraction of a second that Ouma would get tears on him, or something, or do something unexpected, and that fear flipped over in his stomach, but—but Ouma just kept speaking, their eyes locked through it all.

“I _had_ to lie to myself!” he cried. “If—If I hadn’t told myself this was fun, I wouldn’t have _survived_ this long!”

All Kaito could manage was a choked, “Y-You…”

What was meant to be a grounding statement came out fragmented, a reinforcement of the unreality of the situation. Ouma was so predictable; so predictable and still so able to catch Kaito off guard.

“Th-The bastards who created this fucking game to toy with our lives… And the pieces of shit who keep watching and enjoying it… They just…piss me off! All of them…!”

His living contradiction and counterpart all in one.

“That’s why,” Ouma hissed, “I’ll do…whatever it takes…to put an end to this _fucking game!_ ”

They were so _close_. To be so frightened and involved in such small a space, surrounded on all other sides by open air…

Kaito readjusted his hold, his arrow wound still burning and tender where he’d pressed it between Ouma’s side and right arm. His matching shoulder injury had left him disabled on that side, Kaito assumed, as his arm hung limp against his own.

Ouma dropped his head, breaking their eye contact, and he laughed.

“Momota-chan,” he said. “C-Come on… I gave you your answer, so…”

“Alright,” Kaito said, automatic. “Can you walk?”

Ouma lifted his head back up, his hair flipping out of the way so Kaito could see his eyes again. “What…” he whispered. “What…do you think?”

The decision was one of the easier ones he’d made that night. Kaito took Ouma’s right arm and lifted it slowly, gently, so not as to hurt him, to wrap about his shoulders for support. When Ouma breathed out a sigh of pain, it came out light and cool against Kaito’s collarbone. Kaito swallowed down his unease at how unnatural that felt, but…he was still breathing. Ouma was dying, but he was still alive.

That made two of them.

“C’mon,” Kaito said. “We can end this.”

Ouma let out another huff of laughter against his skin as they took slow steps to the control panel. “I’d hope so… I-I’ve had…enough of this, about now…”

“Enough of me?” Kaito smiled. “Yeah, it’s just like you to say something like that.”

“Insulting…the suitor, who’s come to carry me to my death…?”

Kaito snorted. “Well, when you say it like that.”

“Hmm,” Ouma sighed. “My knight…in shining galaxy print…”

“Real fuckin’ funny.”

The steps were slower to conquer, but they made their jagged way up, breathing heavy and uneven. Once they were settled on flat ground, Kaito unwound himself from Ouma’s side and helped him lean up against the control panel.

Kaito said, “Try not to accidentally kill me,” just as Ouma picked the camera up from where he’d left it.

Ouma made a soft sound. “I’ll…try to.”

“Not to?”

“Whatever.”

Kaito stopped at the bottom of the stairs and looked over at the hydraulic press, dull and industrial and looming over him as if expectant, waiting for them to get on with the show. He frowned. The hangar had gone completely silent aside from Ouma’s weak, labored breathing echoing off the walls. There was a stillness that seemed to have taken all the lightheartedness out of the air, like the mood had been tangible, a piece of tissue paper dipped underwater until it flaked and deteriorated away into pieces before Kaito’s eyes; something that swapped emotions as abruptly as Ouma had done his whole time in the game.

It was almost fitting, Kaito thought. Almost.

Ouma hadn’t seemed to notice Kaito’s moment of hesitation. “You…” he started, and Kaito glanced back to see him fiddling with the camera on the panel. “You have to…keep this in…the same spot, here. Or else…”

“Or else the angle will move. ‘Cause we’re using the pause button.”

“Yup,” Ouma affirmed, his tone as far from distinctive as Kaito had ever heard it.

“I’m going,” Kaito said.

Ouma responded, “Then go.”

Kaito couldn’t read Ouma’s feelings. It was off-putting; while it’d been hard to do before, the reason for that was Ouma’s acclimation to lying nonstop. The way he couldn’t read him now had nothing to do with that.

Kaito sighed and approached the hydraulic press.

“Your sleeve,” Ouma reminded him as he shrugged his jacket off.

“I know,” Kaito said. “Leave it hanging out right here?”

“Mhmm.”

Kaito draped his jacket over the metallic slab. Leaving it there… It wasn’t a truly proper sendoff for either of them alike, but it was what they had to work with.

“Lie down,” Ouma instructed.

God, but what an awful way to die.

“I’ll…let it go, until you’re out of frame… I-It might come close, but…”

“I trust you,” Kaito said, and was surprised to feel that his words were the truth. Ouma was a shell of lies wrapped around some unknown center, but the determination he’d shown tonight was as much a glimpse of that obscurity as Kaito needed. And in that obscurity, the sliver he had seen, was his honesty.

And Kaito trusted that.

Kaito kicked a leg over the side of the press to settle himself on it, a temporary visitor in one final, industrial grave.

“Good?” he asked.

“Yeah,” Ouma said. “Keep…your arms in. Stay still.” And then he clicked the power buttons.

Kaito couldn’t help starting at the high whining noise that blared from the opposing side of the press. He didn’t tear his eyes from it. For a second, he wondered if it were actually moving, but then: _Yes, yeah, it definitely was_. An unhurried, unyielding descent upon him, but still a descent. He took a shuddering breath as it advanced, and right before it got too close for comfort, it stopped.

Kaito exhaled.

“You can,” Ouma said. He coughed. “You can…come out, now.”

Kaito didn’t need to hear it twice; he rolled himself off of the ledge and steadied himself back on solid ground, careful not to drag his jacket with him. Ouma was waiting expectantly on the platform, the camera still balanced on the edge of the control panel.

The blue overhead lights framed a strange reflection off the ends of Ouma’s tangled hair. It matched with the gray-blue tinge in his face, still stained with tears. Kaito approached the bottom of the staircase to blink up at him.

Ouma blinked back. “Hi,” he said.

“Uh,” Kaito said. “Hey. Are you…”

Ouma looked at him.

“…I’m gonna carry you down,” Kaito decided on.

Ouma rolled his eyes. “Oh, great,” he said, but turned regardless when Kaito took shaky steps over to him. “If you drop me…”

“You’ll never forgive me?” Kaito guessed, trying to assess the best way to pick him up. After a moment, he settled on looping his right arm around Ouma’s back, his left arm under his legs, and lifting him off the ground. Ouma made a quiet sound and let the side of his head slump against the spot between Kaito’s neck and shoulder.

“No,” Ouma whispered, cool breath on Kaito’s skin again. Kaito waited for a continuation that didn’t come.

Carrying Ouma was like carrying something delicate. Kaito struggled to balance both of them in such a weak state, but they made it back down the staircase unscathed, Ouma wrapped up in his arms. As they approached the center of the floor, Ouma whispered into the crook of Kaito’s neck.

“Put me down.”

Kaito did, gently. He tilted Ouma downwards until his feet hit the ground, then retracted his left arm so he could stand on his own. His right hand slid up Ouma’s back to help support him on his feet; as it neared his shoulder, Ouma lifted his left hand to wrap around Kaito’s. For balance. Ouma’s fingers curled lightly over Kaito’s until he was steady, when he released him.

“Can you,” Ouma started, “help me…with my shirt?”

Kaito blinked down at him. “What?”

“My shirt… And my scarf…near the bathroom. You need to…flush them.”

“I, uh,” Kaito said. “I’m really not following, here, man…”

“If Harukawa-chan breaks…at the trial…and there’s evidence…”

“Like a plant?” Kaito asked, trying to understand. As he always did. “So she can testify that everything happened? I—I guess I can…”

“Good,” Ouma rasped. He lifted his left arm and twisted away from Kaito.

Kaito wasn’t going to complain now, even if he hardly understood the nature of Ouma’s suggestions; he leant forward to help peel Ouma’s shirt up and off of him, the blood congealed and stiff in the white fabric. Ouma’s skin was like ice where Kaito’s fingers brushed over it, and he trembled faintly as the knobs of his spine were revealed. Kaito swallowed. God, he really _was_ small. Kaito felt impossibly taller than him in that moment, like if he got any closer, Ouma might just…disappear. Like he could uncase him in a hug and Ouma would vanish altogether, some minutes too early.

Ouma spun back around once Kaito was folding his bloodied shirt over his shoulder.

Kaito bit his tongue. Ouma’s ribs _were_ as visible as his collarbones. That detail dragged a tangle of emotions to the front of Kaito’s mind, both chiding and amused. He wasn’t sure if he was closer to laughter or tears.

“You…still have to clean, your blood…at the railing,” Ouma said. “Once we’re done…” A wheeze. “You need to…take the script and camera…with you, in the Exisal… And remember…to break the wiring, so that…”

“So that the press can’t be lifted again,” Kaito finished for him. “Got it. Is there anything…”

“No,” Ouma whispered. “That’s it.”

For a moment, neither of them spoke; it felt near inappropriate to do. All the emotions, all the fighting and compromising and teamwork they’d been through since the hangar door had shut seemed to hang in the air between them. Kaito had thought…working alongside Ouma, for sure, was something that neither of them could handle.

And yet…they’d done a decent job, even including the bumps.

 “So,” Ouma said, breaking the reprise they’d allowed themselves. “If…you’re ready, then—“

“You weren’t boring,” Kaito said suddenly, a rush of words that were thrown out there before he could consider them.

Ouma stared at him.

Kaito grabbed Ouma’s wrist. “You _weren’t_ ,” he said. “I…don’t know for sure if that even really fuckin’ mattered to you, or if what you’ve been saying is true or not, but… If you did care about that, and you wanted to know… You weren’t. I promise, you _really_ weren’t fucking boring.”

Kaito paused.

“Ouma,” he said. “Kokichi.” And then he let him go.

Ouma was still watching him through hazy, tired eyes when he breathed a quiet laugh. “You…” he said, “weren’t boring, either.”

Kaito smiled. “Yeah. In the bathroom…”

“Mhm.” Ouma tilted his head. “I really hated…needing help from…a guy, like you,” he whispered, another quiet admission. “But… W-Who knows… If we had more time, maybe we…”

The corner of Ouma’s mouth was managing one last tiny, mischievous smirk.

“…Could’ve been friends, or something.”

Kaito couldn’t help but return the look, already knowing what Ouma was leading into.

“Or,” he said. “Or maybe…”

“…That’s a lie,” Ouma finished.

The feelings Kaito held for Ouma were probably the most complex he’d ever felt about another human being _ever_ ; there was so much hate and animosity mixed in with his impression of him, and their arguing the entire night had proven just how much that was a part of them, and he didn’t doubt that Ouma’s feelings were the same, but…

In the moment…

Being friends with him really did sound like something nice.

They had made a good duo. Two partners in a circumstantial crime.

“Man, I… I don’t think there’s an easy way to do this,” Kaito acknowledged.

“There’s not,” Ouma agreed. He reached out to take Kaito’s hand. “…Come on.”

Their final steps towards the hydraulic press were peculiar ones. This was their final act; the last spoke in the wheel of their plan to ruin the killing game, a last notch in the rising action to some awful climax, but…Kaito couldn’t feel like what they were doing was meaningful, even if it would be. They were setting out to ruin Monokuma, to destroy his credibility from the foundation up, but it didn’t feel like they were doing something that important, or partaking in some desperate last stand. It felt more like…

Well, Kaito thought. It felt more like he was just killing Ouma.

“D’you need help with—“

Ouma nodded.

Kaito released Ouma’s hand to help get him settled on his back, and Kaito felt a quiet gratitude in that moment that his jacket had been part of their staging; it seemed more humane to rest Ouma on that than leaving him alone. Instead of metal, the cosmos got to be the lining of Ouma’s cold, makeshift coffin.

Ouma looked out at him from the narrow gap between the two sides of the hydraulic press. Kaito felt the familiar stinging through his body again, the same stinging he’d felt when going to collect the crossbow and leave the bathroom in order; it left his limbs feeling heavy, his throat dry, and his stomach nauseous. Ouma…looked so small and sick.

“…Good to go?” Kaito managed.

“Yeah,” Ouma whispered.

Kaito gave Ouma one last nod and turned away. He headed back up the control panel stairs before he could hesitate; he was sure if he faltered now, he wouldn’t be able to carry on. And he’d promised… God, this was crucial.

And awful.

“Both,” Kaito choked, once he was in front of the camera, looking out at the scene before him. It didn’t feel real, in truth. He cleared his throat.

“B-Both…buttons at the same time, right…?”

Ouma made a quiet noise of affirmation.

Kaito inhaled shakily. “Alright,” he said. “Fuck, though…”

“It’s…fine. You’ll do fine, so… Hit play.”

_Fuck_ , Kaito thought. Fuck. This was so…

“I will,” Kaito breathed. “I’m going to.”

“Mhmm.”

“…Bye,” Kaito offered, impulsive. He was still stalling. He wasn’t sure what to say to someone—someone he’d known, and hated, and trusted—who…

“Bye,” Ouma replied, his voice hardly audible. “Momota-chan.”

Kaito took a gasp of air, put both hands over the matching start buttons, and turned his head away.

And he clicked them.

Kaito had been expecting the whir of the hydraulic press; he’d heard it moments before, when he’d been under it himself, and was prepared for that. He hadn’t been prepared for the wet, gruesome crashing noise that followed it.

He hit the stop button on the camera before he could reel. There was a flash of a memory in his mind: Ouma’s head against his shoulder while he ripped the arrow out of his flesh, some gross, soft noise and Ouma’s voice piercing above it immediately after. Ouma’s voice had not followed this incident. Kaito kept his head down for a moment longer, trying to catch his breath, before he looked back up.

“Oh, fucking _God_ ,” he whispered.

There couldn’t possibly have been that much blood. Kaito’s hands went to his mouth, shock and disgust and terror at once, and the sudden movement knocked Ouma’s shirt back off his shoulder and to the panel floor. Kaito knelt quickly to recover it, glad to tear his eyes away from the scene. Fucking hell. Fucking _hell_.

He didn’t want to have to look at that again _ever_ , but—

He had a plan to finish. Kaito kept his eyes down as he shut the side of the camera and tucked it into his pocket. He walked down the stairs on shaky legs.

The blood across the floor entered Kaito’s line of sight, and he gagged. Fuck. _Come on_ , he thought to himself. Keep it together.

_Just stop being a baby_ , Ouma’s voice rang in his head. Kaito let out a combined laugh and cough.

The wiring, he remembered. He had to destroy the wiring, so no one would ever be able to see Ouma’s body again.

Already, without Ouma there, the hangar felt strange; he’d had such a way of stealing all the attention in the room and making himself seen. Kaito felt sure if he listened hard enough, he’d hear the ghost of his instructions, but…

No. The wiring, his blood, the clothes. He had to do it himself. _You’ll do fine_ , Ouma had said. He would. He would finish this.

Kaito held his breath as he stepped around the pools of blood on the floor and approached the other side of the hydraulic press, where the power cord connected into it. Ouma…hadn’t left instructions on this part, but the point was to destroy it. Kaito blinked at the wire; it looked sturdy, but he’d just have to wear it down. After his moment of inspection, he leaned in and gave it an experimental tug. It wasn’t as strong as he’d expected… He could do it, probably.

Kaito summoned as much of his remaining strength as he could, then ripped the wire; for a second, he could feel resistance inside the sheathing, taut and strained, but then it snapped suddenly with a jolt of electricity. He let out a “Fuck!” and dropped it to the ground, Ouma’s shirt crumpling off his shoulder once more.

Right. Shit, whatever. He’d gotten it. He knelt to pick up Ouma’s clothing, coughed, and turned to face the bathroom.

_Right_.

Kaito wasn’t sure how much time was left on the Electrobomb; he couldn’t keep dragging his feet on his end of this deal. With that on his mind, he headed back to the industrial door, collected Ouma’s scarf that was still spread out next to it, and opened it back up.

Their prior staging was displayed once again by the ring light overhead, and Kaito winced. He’d seen the room enough, and he was tired of it—he’d spent days in here, withering and waiting, only to kick the door in for a confrontation that had ended…like this. He glanced towards the water heater in the corner, and the vacant spot next to it where Ouma had casually made the decision to hand Kaito his life, smiling the whole while. Kaito shook his head to clear it; he walked over to the toilet, lifted the seat, rolled Ouma’s clothes into a loose ball, then—

Threw up.

Kaito’s knees gave out under him, and he just managed to catch himself against the edge of the toilet as he collapsed. Still, he hit the ground hard. Ouma’s clothes unfolded and splayed out next to him, and Kaito picked himself up just in time to throw up one more time, burning his eyes and nose and mouth.

Fuck. Of course.

The events of the night, both the physically and mentally taxing ones, were starting to catch back up with him, but he bit his tongue and cringed, trying to ignore the bitterness left in both his mouth and mind. He didn’t have time to get sick; he didn’t have time to worry, or mourn, or stall in fear of anything else. Kaito had to finish this. He dutifully looked away from the toilet, and the concerning amount of blood in it—he didn’t need to see that to know that his own time was running short now, just a fuse winding down further and further until it was out.

Like the Electrobomb, which he still had to beat. He stood back up.

Kaito glanced towards the sink and spotted the toothbrush Ouma had passed him in with dinner the night he’d woken up alone. He’d laughed when he first saw it, and yelled through the door, “You’re fucking kidding, right?” and Ouma had responded, “Nope, you idiot, don’t want you dying,” and Kaito hadn’t missed how he’d avoided the topic he _knew_ Kaito was addressing. It seemed…like twisting the knife when it happened—Ouma subtly mocking that Kaito would be there for a while—and it’d made Kaito even more pissed off at him. Now, after tonight, Kaito wasn’t sure.

He swallowed, then tossed the toothbrush in the toilet as well.

After a second, Kaito pulled toilet paper off the roll and walked back into the hangar to wipe the blood he coughed up near the Exisals, Ouma’s voice the nonstop background noise in his head, now— _You have to clean that_ —driving him to finish all of this shit already. He returned to the bathroom, tossed the bloody paper into the toilet, and flushed it.

Everything went down clean. Once that was through, he recollected the clothing he dropped and flushed that as well. This was an instruction he was following blindly; whatever Ouma’s intentions with this were, he wasn’t positive, but since he had asked… The toilet made a strange noise as it went down, the handle went slack, and Kaito felt confident enough that the clothes were caught in the pipes. Well.

Things…were in order, then.

Kaito limped back to the control panel, still averting his eyes from…what used to be his accomplice, and picked up the script. He made sure he still had the camera on him, approached the red Exisal, the hood still up from when he’d moved it the first time, clawed his way back up to the cockpit, and slammed it shut without looking back.

And _sighed_.

“Fuck,” he said in the darkness. “Fuck!”

Kaito’s head was in his hands in an instant.

Everything had gotten so fucked up. Everything had been so fucked up. Here he was sitting, officially the culprit of a murder. The blackened his friends would have to pick out tomorrow; the blackened he needed his friends to _fail_ to pick out tomorrow. And if that didn’t happen, and their plan failed instead…

No, Kaito thought. He’d do his best. He just had to get everything down well enough, and…

He swung his good arm out and hit the first button he could on the inner paneling, and the mechanisms came to life in a faint blue glow. It was enough light that he could open the script and make it legible. If he just threw himself into reading this, then…

God. His head hurt, and his chest, and the rest of his body.

Kaito glanced down at his shirts, the white fabric stained bright with blood. Ouma hadn’t been exaggerating when he’d said Kaito was covered in it—alongside the splatters down his clothing, he knew it was on his skin as well. He raised a hand to his chin and dragged it down his neck. Sure enough, blood flaked off of him and stuck to his fingers. Kaito let out a tense laugh before returning to the script, as much of a distraction as a priority at that point.

He didn’t want to think too much. He didn’t want to think about Ouma, and—

Tears blurred his vision until he couldn’t read the book in his hands.

Damn.

And he’d held up _so_ well until this point.

Kaito set the script on his lap so he could wipe away the tears running hot down his face. He’d thought…a lot of things about Ouma, both good and bad—mostly bad, he wanted to laugh, which was justified, of course, and made sense, but—but that just made it clearer that Kaito couldn’t not _think_ about him. Ouma was why he was here, crying in an Exisal right now, like a fucking child. The whole night had been so fucking surreal, the two of them arguing and working together and arguing again until… Until Ouma had been too weak to keep talking, and Kaito had to carry him to his fucking death, a nightmare that could’ve been avoided in so many different goddamn ways, if only they’d just better seen it coming, or…

“God,” Kaito said aloud, just because he could.

Him and Ouma had been a constant back and forth until the end. _The end_ , Kaito wanted to laugh again. The end had been…ten minutes ago. Him and Ouma had been a constant back and forth until ten minutes ago, when Kaito left him in a machine meant to dispose of useless debris, not people, said goodbye to him, and killed him. All because Ouma asked him to. They’d done it to save everyone— _he’d_ done it to save everyone, but still, it didn’t feel like that at all. Right now, he just felt more desperate and alone than he ever fucking had, both anger and sadness roiling and crashing through him like waves.

His mind went back to Ouma, clinging onto his jacket. His hair, his hands, his shoulders. He’d only touched Ouma before to hurt him, and in the past two hours, he’d touched him several times over just to comfort him. It was an odd subversion of their usual behavior. Kaito thought about Ouma, crying, close to his face, the two of them breathing the same air. Ouma, small, cold, dying, in his arms and with his head lolled into Kaito’s neck, too tired to support himself. That was…

Ouma hadn’t wanted his help. He’d said that. But Kaito had already given it out of necessity, and what Ouma wanted didn’t matter when he couldn’t stand on his own.

There was so much there, buried within him. So many conflicting emotions: the pity, at the surface, at how weak and frail Ouma had been at the worst of it. The disgust at some of his behavior that night, and nights before: him making fun of Gonta, who he’d openly acknowledged getting killed, and the fact that he’d carried through with something so fucking manipulative. The…realization, upsetting and stirring in his stomach, that if Ouma hadn’t done that to Gonta, Kaito wouldn’t be here right now, in the Exisal, on the brink of ending the game and saving the others. And, _God_ , he wanted to save the others.

Ouma had too, allegedly. Ouma was pissed off at the game. Kaito couldn’t imagine he would break down willingly—when Maki had been in the hangar earlier, staring Ouma down the end of her crossbow, demanding answers…Ouma had remained silent, thinking he would die. He hadn’t shared anything then—what caused him to do it near the hydraulic press, on the verge of death a second time, saying it only so Kaito could hear? Saying he was scared, and…

That was another emotion, a weird one, that caused more tears, and Kaito didn’t want to think too much about it. He couldn’t.

Was Gonta alright to sacrifice, same as Akamatsu, so the others could live? The others, the others, the others: it felt like every fucking time Kaito thought about that group, his friends, _the others_ , it was just smaller and smaller and smaller. This fucking death trap of a game, something being recorded for entertainment—Ouma had figured that out, too—had claimed so many of their lives, traumatically, and the survivors had to continue on regardless, no refractory period to mourn or pull themselves together.

_No_ , Kaito thought. No. He was panicking way too much… One person’s life wasn’t worth more than any other’s. Gonta didn’t deserve to die as Akamatsu didn’t deserve to die, and Amami, and Hoshi, and Toujou, and every other Ultimate student whose life had been claimed on camera, sick, absurd, and indulgent.

Including Ouma. Even if only Kaito had watched him.

And in his head, his own voice rang, _Liars burn in hell, you know._

He…really had been mean to Ouma.

But Ouma had wanted it that way. He’d played the part of the mastermind and forced everyone to hate him; he’d distanced himself of his own accord, and not only that, but he’d been mean, back. No, he’d been fucking _evil_. It was a convincing act, right? An _in-character_ act. Kaito had been sure that once Ouma was gone, this would be over and done with, but the mysteries surrounding him were still fresh in his mind. Ouma…never really did show his true face. Not until he had nothing left to lose, no one else around in the world to hear his final words except for Kaito as they were cried out in front of him. If they even _were_ true, and not just some final ploy to stop Kaito from cowering the fuck out of killing him.

What had Kaito said to Ouma before the press dropped? _Goodbye_.

Stupid. He wished he could’ve said more.

Kaito took a deep, stuttering breath, and then he began coughing. And coughing, and coughing, and coughing, brutal and bloody for a minute, and then the fit died down, and he was left back alone in silence.

The tears had stopped, but his face was still wet. He hastily wiped the trails away with his sleeves.

Kaito was being a hero, doing this. Even if it didn’t feel like it. So he couldn’t cry. Heroes didn’t cry.

He took another breath, and this time, he didn’t cough. Good.

Good.

Fuck.

Fucking hell, tonight was a first for a lot of things. Fainting, getting shot, anxiety attacks. Becoming a murderer.

And it was probably the last night he had.

He had to make it a worthwhile one. For himself, for Ouma, for his friends.

His friends.

Shuuichi, the easiest threat to derail this entire plan, had been sitting in the back of Kaito’s mind the whole night. He hadn’t brought him up, because… Well, the plan had seemed foolproof, but it wasn’t. He didn’t want to admit it, and he didn’t think Ouma did, either. Kaito looked back down at the script—Ouma was a planner, but he wasn’t a perfectionist. If there was anything he’d learned from being friends with Shuuichi, it was that the guy was one infallible fucking detective. Even with fake evidence planted everywhere, it was unlikely…he wouldn’t see through it.

Kaito opened the script back up to a random page.

He traced the lines of Ouma’s handwriting with a finger. It was jagged and childish. The two of them slanted some of their characters the same way.

He flipped to another page, where there was a little scribble of a rocket in the margins. Its speech bubble boasted: _I’m Kaito Momota, Luminary of Being a Dumbass!_

Kaito laughed.

Ouma had been human, even if he was a menace. Another teenager trapped in an impossible situation, just like him. Just like Shuuichi, and Harumaki, and everyone else who’d come before and after him.

Kaito looked up when the lock on the Exisal made an audible click, and he thought back to when he first piloted it; Ouma had mentioned the machine being able to open freely when the Electrobomb was detonated, so that meant…

Kaito took another breath. No going back.

He’d fight to expose the truth tomorrow using only lies. Even if he was doomed from the start, if Ouma’s plan ended up torn to pieces on the courtroom floor, and they were exposed for all they had done…

He would still give it all he could, and he would go out with a fucking bang while he was at it.

**Author's Note:**

> also known as: kokichi ouma's renowned, extensive plan to convince one ultimate astronaut to kill him! and then become him. it really did get rather complicated.
> 
> i want to call this a love letter to chapter 5, but i suppose it's closer to hate mail, hah. i've always had some confusion going over the 5th trial, so i took the info we had with it and ran. obviously, some details are different in places, some dialogue was lifted directly from the game, so it ended up as a bit of a mixed issue. either way...i tried to balance it decently enough.
> 
> and if you got this far: thanks for reading! i'm not there, but i'm sure i'll end up on twitter one of these days, haha.


End file.
